Monitoring geothermal springs and groundwater of Pir Panjal, Jammu and Kashmir, for radon contamination
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Monitoring geothermal springs and groundwater of Pir Panjal, Jammu and Kashmir, for radon contamination Salik Nazir1 · Shakeel Simnani1 · B. K. Sahoo2 · Rosaline Mishra2 · Tanu Sharma3 · Sajad Masood1 Received: 23 March 2020 / Accepted: 6 October 2020 © Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, Hungary 2020
Abstract Hot water springs and bore wells/hand-pumps were investigated to quantify radon and uranium levels in Rajouri area of the Pir Panjal. Scintillation-based radon monitor was employed for radon-222 detection while as LED Flourimetric technique was used to detect uranium-238 concentration. The radon-222 levels, found in the study area, are much higher than the limits prescribed by regulatory agencies like United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA). Some of the samples exceeded the allowed limits of 100 Bq L −1 set by World Health Organisation while none of the samples lied within the −1 prescribed level of 11 Bq L prescribe by USEPA. Keywords Groundwater radioactivity · 222Rn · 238U · Pir-Panjal · Geo-thermal springs · Effective dose
Introduction Pir Panjal, rich in faults and fractures, is known for geothermal springs which are known to have high radon concentrations [1, 2]. Surface water and groundwater are two major sources of drinking water on the planet. In fact, groundwater contributes to almost half of all drinking water, globally [3]. During its course, groundwater comes in contact with various radium rich rocks and thus, radon gets dissolved in it [4, 5]. It is, therefore, imperative to measure radioactive contamination present in groundwater. Higher concentration of radon-222 in groundwater is an indicator of higher levels of indoor radon as soil and building materials are the largest sources of indoor radon. Airborne radon and its decay products contribute to an average inhaled dose of 1.26 mSv per year which is almost half of the natural background radiation dose received by the general public [6] and therefore poses an immense health risk [7–9]. Although, 222Rn delivers dose * Shakeel Simnani [email protected] 1
Department of Physics, University of Kashmir, Hazratbal, J&K 190006, India
2
Radiation Safety Systems Division, Health Physics Division, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Trombay, Mumbai 400085, India
3
Department of Physics, Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, Punjab 143005, India
due to both ingestion as well as inhalation, nevertheless, the latter is the dominant factor to the dose received by humans. The occurrence of natural radionuclides depends on several factors like lithology and presence or absence of faults and fractures [10–13] and therefore the concentration of these radionuclides have a huge disparity throughout the surface of the earth. Uranium-238 is the most abundant isotope (99.28%) and is found in trace amounts almost everywhere in earth’s crust. 238U has a half-life of 4.5 billion years and therefore is not a highly radioactive element. In fact, at high concentrations, its chemical toxicity by far exceeds its radiological toxicity [14, 15]. The 238U
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