Wednesday, November 26, 2014

Sampling trip to Cameron Highlands

Entering Pahang from Perak, Malaysia

Presented at STSS2010



Natural Radioactivity Measurement And assessment of exposure in Tourism Beach Sands of Southern Peninsular Malaysia

Ahmad Saat1*, Zaini Hamzah2, Hamimmah Jamaluddin2
1Instutute of Science
2Faculty of Applied Sciences
Universiti Teknologi MARA
40450 Shah Alam, Malaysia

*Corresponding author: ahmad183@salam.uitm.edu.my

ABSTRACT

The distribution of gamma-ray activity concentration and their respective annual effective dose rate from radionuclides 40K, 226Ra and 232Th for sand samples collected from eight tourism beaches in Southern Peninsular Malaysia were determined. The gamma-ray activity was measured by using gamma-ray spectrometry method. The study found that the mean activity concentration of 226Ra varies between 7.33 to 51.04 Bqkg-1, 232Th between 5.86 and 37.50 Bqkg-1 while 40K between 32.70 and 146.4 Bqkg-1 respectively. The corresponding annual effective dose from these natural radiations ranged between 0.051 and 0.301 mSv/y. This average is way below the average worldwide exposure of 2.4 mSv/y. The external radiation hazard index calculated for the eight samples ranged between 0.05 and 0.30.

Keywords: Gamma-rays, annual effective dose, hazard index.