Burning fossil fuel could reduce accuracy of carbon dating method

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HONG KONG: Radiocarbon dating is used to estimate the age of everything from fossils to historical works of art and artifacts.
But new research suggests that the increase of carbon in the atmosphere due to the burning of fossil fuels could reduce the accuracy of this dating method.
Radiocarbon dating works by measuring the amount of carbon-14, a radioactive, naturally occurring isotope that has a known rate of decay. Using calculations, based on the amount of carbon-14 left in an organic specimen and comparing it to the amount of nonradioactive carbon, scientists can estimate the age of the sample.
Organisms take in a representative amount of nonradioactive and radioactive carbon either as plants or from plants, which take it up from the atmosphere during photosynthesis.