Presented at STSS2010

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

Ahmad Saat^1*, 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.