Home            Contact us            FAQs
    
      Journal Home      |      Aim & Scope     |     Author(s) Information      |      Editorial Board      |      MSP Download Statistics

     Research Journal of Environmental and Earth Sciences


Assessment of the Exposure to Natural Radioactivity to Public from the Consumption of Tap Drinking Water in the Six Most Populated Townships of the District of Abidjan

1P.C. Kezo, 1G.A. Monnehan, 3A. Faanu, 1B.D.L.H. Gogon, 1A.A. Koua, 1T.P.A. Dali and 2K.Djagouri
1Laboratory of Nuclear Physics and Radioprotection, Faculty of Sciences of Structure of Matter and Technology, University Felix Houphouet-Boigny, 22 BP 582 Abidjan 22, Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire
2School Superior Normal, 08 BP 10 Abidjan 10, Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire
3Radiation Protection Institute, GAEC, Box LG 80, Legon, Ghana
Research Journal of Environmental and Earth Sciences  2016  4:56-62
http://dx.doi.org/10.19026/rjees.8.3066  |  © The Author(s) 2016
Received: June ‎25, ‎2016  |  Accepted: August ‎9, ‎2016  |  Published: November 20, 2016

Abstract

This study assesses the level of natural radioactivity due to radionuclides, 226Ra, 232Th and 40K, in 28 tap water samples collected from 6 most populated townships of Abidjan by using gamma spectrometry method for analysis. The activity concentrations of 226Ra, 232Th and 40K varied from < AMD to 0.82 Bq/L, < AMD to 0.73 Bq/L and 0.82 to 5.91 Bq/L, respectively, with mean values of 0.36±0.06 Bq/L, 0.11±0.04 Bq/L and 2.08±0.69 Bq/L respectively, measured from all the water samples studied. The annual effective doses due to the ingestion of the natural radionuclides measured in the samples ranged from 8.06 to 127.41 μSv/y with an average value of 39.62±11.62 μSv/y. This average calculated annual effective dose was found to be much lower than the guideline doses of 100 μSv/y and 290 μSv/y respectively recommended by WHO and UNSCEAR. Therefore no harmful effect is expected directly to the population by drinking this water.

Keywords:

Activity concentration, annual effective dose and lifetime risk, drinking water, natural radioactivity, populated townships,


References


Competing interests

The authors have no competing interests.

Open Access Policy

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.

Copyright

The authors have no competing interests.

ISSN (Online):  2041-0492
ISSN (Print):   2041-0484
Submit Manuscript
   Information
   Sales & Services
Home   |  Contact us   |  About us   |  Privacy Policy
Copyright © 2024. MAXWELL Scientific Publication Corp., All rights reserved