ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Radiation and Health
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1635278
Evaluating 90 Sr Contamination in Seafood and Human Exposure Risks near Zhejiang Nuclear Power Plants, China
Provisionally accepted
- 1Zhejiang Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Hangzhou, China
- 2Suzhou Medical College of Soochow University School of Public Health, Suzhou, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Objective: This work aims to assess the impact of three nuclear power plants (NPPs) in Zhejiang Province on the levels of ⁹⁰Sr in surrounding seafood, and to evaluate the associated health risks, providing a scientific basis for operational monitoring and contributing essential baseline data for nuclear emergency preparedness.Methods: From 2021 to 2023, the specific activities of 90 Sr in five types of seafood (fish, shrimp, mussels, crabs, and algae) were monitored in the three NPPs, compared with Zhoushan City, which has no NPP, and the annual effective dose (AED) was estimated.Results: The results show that the mean specific activities of 90 Sr in fish, shrimp, mussels, crabs, and algae around the NPPs were found to range from 0.09 to 0.76 Bq/kg, 0.03 to 0.30 Bq/kg, 0.01 to 0.22 Bq/kg, 0.11 to 1.04 Bq/kg, and 0.02 to 0.95 Bq/kg, respectively. According to the Kruskal-Wallis test, there was no statistically significant difference between the 90 Sr specific activities in seafood from the three NPPs and Zhoushan. The AED due to 90 Sr intake from seafood for residents living around the three NPPs and Zhoushan are much lower than the recommended threshold of 1.0 mSv/y. Conclusions: The comprehensive monitoring results demonstrated that the 90 Sr levels were at background levels and remained stable, consistently well below the limits of the relevant food safety standards, and the dose burden on the population was slight, indicating that the operation of the NPPs in Zhejiang Province did not have a significantly impact on the local seafood.
Keywords: 90 Sr, Seafood, Nuclear power plant, Zhejiang Province, Risk Assessment
Received: 26 May 2025; Accepted: 14 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhou, Wang, Zou, Ren, Wang, Yu, Lai and Cao. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Yiyao Cao, Zhejiang Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Hangzhou, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.