Delay times between harvesting or collection of food products and consumption for use in radiological assessments.

From a radiological protection point of view, the inclusion of delay times when carrying out assessments of dose from consumption of foods should be considered. A review of delay times has been carried out to update a report published in 1983, to take account of changes and modernisations in industrial food processes, together with changes in diet and popularity of different foods in the United Kingdom. The new review considered more foods and data for existing foods have been reconsidered to check whether manufacturing processes or procedures have changed the shelf-life of any products. For some foods there have been changes made to the recommended delay times because of changes in manufacture or handling of the fresh foodstuff. A discussion is also included on the appropriate use of delay times in dose assessments.

Distribution of beta-lactam and beta-lactone producing bacteria in nature.

Over one million bacteria were isolated from a large variety of soil, plant and water samples collected from different environments and examined in an extremely sensitive and highly specific screen for beta-lactam production. A group of seven related monocyclic beta-lactams (monobactams) were isolated from strains representing four genera-Agrobacterium, Chromobacterium, Gluconobacter and Pseudomonas. Monobactam-producing strains of Agrobacterium and Pseudomonas were isolated only rarely. Producing strains of Chromobacterium were isolated from a relatively limited number of habitats while the Gluconobacter strains appeared to be widespread in nature. In addition, three closely related beta-lactone-containing molecules were isolated from strains representing three genera-Arthrobacter, Bacillus and Pseudomonas. The Bacillus and Pseudomonas strains were isolated infrequently but from a variety of samples. The producing strain of Arthrobacter was isolated only once.