INVESTIGATIONS OF THE POTENTIAL BIOAVAILABILITY OF PO-210 IN SOME FOODSTUFFS

Extraction of Po-210 from lamb's liver, pig's kidneys, mussel flesh an d brown crabmeat with a series of solvent systems has been used to gai n some insight into the uncertainty about the gastrointestinal absorpt ion factor for Po incorporated into foodstuffs. By extracting the tiss ues with diethyldithiocarbamate dissolved in chloroform, and also in m ethanol, it has been shown that Po-210 is more effectively extracted f rom lamb's liver and crabmeat than it is from each of the other tissue s. A similar pattern of extractability is also evident for aqueous sol utions of citric acid on crabmeat and mussel flesh. Of particular note is the low extractability by dimethylsulphoxide (3%) of Po-210 in mus sel flesh as opposed to 24% extractability of Po-210 from crabmeat. Po -210-binding macromolecules of about 10 kDa have been released from cr abmeat and mussel flesh by digestion with pepsin.