Radiation Protection Dosimetry Advance Access originally published online on March 12, 2008
Radiation Protection Dosimetry 2008 130(3):376-384; doi:10.1093/rpd/ncn064
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Natural radioactivity and external gamma radiation exposure at the coastal Red Sea in Egypt
Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, South Valley University, Qena 83523, Egypt
* Corresponding author: s_r_m_h_10{at}yahoo.com, s.harb{at}web.de
Received September 2, 2007, amended January 22, 2008, accepted February 6, 2008
Radionuclides which present in different beach sands are sources of external exposure that contribute to the total radiation exposure of human. In this work, superficial samples of beach sand were collected from the Red Sea coastline (Ras Gharib, Hurghada, Safaga, Qusier and Marsa Alam areas) and at 20 km on Qena-Safaga road. The distribution of natural radionuclides in sand beach samples was studied by gamma spectrometry. The activity concentrations of primordial and artificial radionuclides in samples that are collected from the coastal environment of the Red Sea were 19.2 ± 3 Bq kg–1 for 210Pb, 21.1 ± 1 Bq kg–1 for 226Ra, 22.7 ± 2 Bq kg–1 for 238U, 1.0 ± 0.1 Bq kg–1 for 235U, 11.6 ± 1 Bq kg–1 for 228Ra, 13.0 ± 1 Bq kg–1 for 228Th, 12.4 ± 1 Bq kg–1 for 232Th, 930 ± 32 Bq kg–1 for 40K and 1.2 ± 0.3 Bq kg–1 for 137Cs. The mean external gamma-dose rate was 62.5 ± 3.2 nSv h–1, 54.4 ± 2.8 nGy h–1 Ra equivalent activity (Raeq) was 107 ± 5.8 Bq kg–1, 0.86 ± 0.04 Bq kg–1 for representative level index (I
) and effective dose rate was 0.067 ± 0.003 mSv y–1 in beach sand red sea, in air due to naturally occurring radionuclides.