Disadvantages of AMS Radiocarbon Dating
An accelerator mass spectrometer, although a powerful tool, is also a costly one. Establishing and maintaining an accelerator mass spectrometer costs millions of dollars.
Due to the small sample sizes involved, control of contaminants is also difficult. Rigorous pretreatment is needed to make sure contaminants have been eliminated and will not lead to substantial errors during the carbon dating process.
Other Applications of AMS
Aside from archaeology, geology and ocean sciences research, AMS is used by biomedical laboratories using “hot” samples labeled with 14C for drug discovery.
Accelerator mass spectrometers are also used in pharmacokinetics, metabolite profiling, toxicology, and microdosing.
AMS is used to determine the natural abundance levels of carbon 14 in oceans as well as to carbon date sedimentary deposits. Accelerator mass spectrometry was used in building a three-dimensional map of carbon 14 distribution in dissolved inorganic carbon