Heavy metal and radon gas concentration levels in Khasa River in Kirkuk City (NE Iraq) and the associated health effects
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Heavy metal and radon gas concentration levels in Khasa River in Kirkuk City (NE Iraq) and the associated health effects Dunya Omer Kareem 1
&
Ahmed Abed Ibrahim 1 & Omer Sabah Ibrahiem 2
Received: 11 October 2019 / Accepted: 15 September 2020 # Saudi Society for Geosciences 2020
Abstract In the present study, analysis of heavy metal and radon concentrations in ten water samples collected from the Khasa River in Kirkuk City, NE Iraq, was investigated. The measurement of the concentrations was carried out by the ICP-MS technique for heavy metal and RAD7 technique for radon. The average concentration values of the heavy metals in the unit parts per billion in the samples are in the following order: Cu (17.72) < Cr (9.42) < Ni (9.08) < Pb (6.78) < As (2.02) < Co (0.83) > Cd (0.1). Hazard quotient and hazard index were used to assess the non-carcinogenic health risk for exposure to heavy metals through ingestion and dermal. The results showed that there is no potential for non-carcinogenic health risk of exposure to heavy metals by ingestion and dermal. Radon concentrations varied from the lowest of 0.035 Bq/L to the highest of 0.359 Bq/L. The annual effected dose of radon was measured for both children and adults, where the annual effected dose average was 0.002893 mSv/ year for children and 0.002048 mSv/year for adults, and these values are below the prescribed dose limit of 0.1 mSv/year by the World Health Organization. Keywords Kirkuk City . Radon gas . Heavy metals . RAD7 . Health risk
Introduction Pollution of the natural environment by heavy metals is a global issue (Castro et al. 2018; Cai et al. 2019a, b). That is because most heavy metals in relatively high concentrations have toxic effects on living organisms (Ribeiro et al. 2018; Li et al. 2018). The harmful effects of heavy metals as environmental pollutants come from two factors: the first is that they cannot be degraded biologically (Lone et al. 2008), the second is that they can accumulate in the soil, water, and plants and Responsible Editor: Amjad Kallel * Dunya Omer Kareem [email protected] Ahmed Abed Ibrahim [email protected] Omer Sabah Ibrahiem [email protected] 1
Department of Physics, College of Science, University of Kirkuk, Kirkuk, Iraq
2
Environmental Research Unit, College of Science, University of Kirkuk, Kirkuk, Iraq
enter the food chain causing risks to human health (Varol and Şen 2012). Heavy metals enter the environment through natural and anthropogenic sources (Jadia and Fulekar 2009). These sources include volcanic eruptions, soil erosion, natural weathering of the earth’s crust, mining and related operations, industrial discharge, sewage urban runoff, pesticides and fertilizers in agriculture, air pollution fallout, and other sources that contaminate the environment (Jin et al. 2019; Cai et al. 2019a, 2019b; Ali et al. 2013; Jadia and Fulekar 2009). Further to heavy metals risks to human health, humans are exposed to radiation risks from both natural and industrial sources. The main sour
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