Question

how does carbon 14 benfit individuals?

Answer 1

Since essentially all sources of human food are derived from plants, the carbon that comprises our bodies contains carbon-14 at the same concentration as the atmosphere. The rates of disintegration of potassium-40 and carbon-14 in the normal adult body are comparable (a few thousand disintegrated nuclei per second).

The beta-decays from external (environmental) radiocarbon contribute approximately 0.01 mSv/year (1 mrem/year) to each person's dose of ionizing radiation.This is small compared to the doses from potassium-40 (0.39 mSv/year) and radon (variable).


Carbon-14 can be used as a radioactive tracer in medicine. In the initial variant of the urea breath test, a diagnostic test for Helicobacter pylori, urea labeled with approximately 37 kBq (1.0 µCi) carbon-14 is fed to a patient (i.e. 37,000 decays per second).

In the event of a H. pylori infection, the bacterial urease enzyme breaks down the urea into ammonia and radioactively-labeled carbon dioxide, which can be detected by low-level counting of the patient's breath. The 14-C urea breath test has been largely replaced by the 13-C urea breath test which has no radiation issues.