Soil-to-mushroom transfer of 137 Cs, 40 K, alkali–alkaline earth element and heavy metal in forest sites of Izmir, Turkey O ¨ zlem Karadeniz • Gu ¨nseli Yaprak Received: 26 October 2010 / Published online: 23 December 2010 Ó Akade ´miai Kiado ´, Budapest, Hungary 2010 Abstract The present work is devoted to an investigation on the soil to mushroom transfer parameters for 137 Cs and 40 K radionuclides, as well as for some stable elements and heavy metals. The results of transfer factors for 137 Cs and 40 K were within the range of 0.06–3.15 and 0.67–5.68, respectively and the most efficiently transferred radionu- clide was 40 K. The TF values for 137 Cs typically conformed to a lognormal distribution, while for 40 K showed normal distribution. Statistically significant correlations between 137 Cs soil to mushroom transfer factors and agrochemical soil properties have been revealed. Although the concen- tration ratios varied within the species, the most efficiently transferred elements seems to have been K, followed by Rb, Zn, Cu, Cd, S, Cs and Hg. Keywords Soil to mushroom transfer  137 Cs  40 K  Alkali–alkaline earth elements  Heavy metals Introduction Soil–plant transfer is the first step by which radionuclides, stable elements and heavy metals enter the food chain. Compared to green plants, high accumulating ability of many essential and/or toxic trace elements, some radionuclides and heavy metals by mushrooms has been known and numerous works have been published since the 1970s [1–5 (and refer- ences therein)]. A number of authors have reported transfer factors of some radionuclides, especially for radiocesium, in different species of mushroom as presented in Table 1, while there still is little data available on the transfer of trace ele- ments and heavy metals to mushrooms [15, 16]. Whereas reliable data on the transfer of these materials in mushrooms are needed for developing and testing models, predicting migrations of these elements and obtaining the associated parameter values appropriate for radioecological and envi- ronmental performance assessments [17]. The transfer of radionuclides and other elements of interest between different ecological compartments of an ecosystem is frequently quantified by many ratio types such as transfer factors, concentration ratios, transfer coefficients and concentration factors [2, 12, 18, 19]. These parameters have been recommended by many international agencies IAEA, IUR and ICRP because of their conceptual simplicity and common use in radioecology [20–25]. These coefficients are expressed as the ratio between the con- tamination of the receptor compartment, and that of the donor. The transfer values can be influenced by some factors such as soil characteristics, climatic conditions, type of plants, part of the plant concerned, physico-chem- ical form of the radionuclides and the effect of the com- petitive species [26 and references therein]. In this study, the uptake of 137 Cs, 40 K, stable elements and heavy metals in 25 mushroom samples, covering 12 biological species such as Agaricus campestris, Lactarius semisanguifluus, Clitocybe bresadoliana, Tricholoma terr- eum, Lactarius sp., Sarcodon scabrosus, Lactarius deli- ciosus, Lepista nuda, Suillus bovinus, Tricholoma sp., Russula delica and Macrolepiota excoriate, was evaluated by means of the estimation of the transfer factor. O ¨ . Karadeniz (&) Department of Physics, Faculty of Sciences, Dokuz Eylu ¨l University, 35160 Tınaztepe-Izmir, Turkey e-mail: ozlem.karadeniz@deu.edu.tr G. Yaprak Institute of Nuclear Sciences, Ege University, 35100 Bornova, I ˙ zmir, Turkey e-mail: gunseli.yaprak@ege.edu.tr 123 J Radioanal Nucl Chem (2011) 288:261–270 DOI 10.1007/s10967-010-0908-7