Sources of Polonium-210 within the troposphere

Contemporary technical literature has given consideration to complementary sources of 210Po (fossil, terrestrial, stratospheric, artificial). A discussion of the importance of these various sources, based on short-time measurements of 210Po, of 210Pb, of long-lived nuclides and of products representative of pollution, carried out in S-W France, is given herein. It is concluded that tropospheric 210Po is of natural origin and derived essentially from the decay of the 210Pb present in the atmosphere.