Simple measurement of14C in the environment using a gel suspension method.

A simple analytical method for environmental¹⁴C with a low background liquid scintillation counter was developed. We used a new gelling agent, N-lauroyl-L-glutamic-α,γ-dibutylamide, for the liquid scintillation counting of¹⁴C as CaCO₃ (gel suspension method). Our procedure for sample preparation was much simpler than that of conventional methods and required no special equipment. The samples prepared with the standard sample of CaCO₃ were measured to evaluate the self absorption of the sample, the optimum condition of counting and the detection limit. Our results indicated that the newly developed technique could be efficiently applied for the monitoring of environmental¹⁴C. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]