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Earth is a major source of several elements which are occurring with different physical and chemical properties in nature. Some of the elements are categorized as Naturally Occurring Radioactive Materials and termed as NORMs. These natural sources and anthropogenic sources combined make the earth’s environment radioactive and human beings continuously receive the amount of the total radiation dose more than 50% of the radiation that comes from radon and thoron. It has been evident that soil is the furthermost important feature that affects the radon/thoron level in the human living surroundings which increases human exposure to radioactivity. The concentration of natural radionuclides elements present in soil or rocks is the main feature of levels of natural background radiation dose. This review paper represents the activity level of Ra-226, Th-232, and K-40 in soil samples of the Himalayas region of Uttarakhand. The data so obtained from previous studies of radionuclides shows the high abundance of radioactive mineralization in the soil of the Himalayan region in the Uttarakhand state of India.

This study evaluates the quality of drinking water samples (sample size=52) taken from various locations of Pithoragarh district, Uttarakhand. The parameters include physiochemical properties viz. total dissolved solids (TDS in mg/L), electrical conductivity/salinity (µS/cm), pH and radiological dose attributable to radon in water (µSv/y). TDS values for the tested samples varied within the range of 18-434 mg/L with average value of 148 mg/L. Electrical conductivity and pH for these samples was measured as 36-868 µS/cm (average: 296 µS/cm) and 6.8-8.2 (average: 7.2), respectively. Radon activity concentration for these water samples was measured using scintillation-based radon monitor, immediately after sampling at the location site. Radon activity concentration was measured as 0.6-81.9 Bq/L with an average value of 17.8 Bq/L. The Journal of Radioanalytical and Nuclear Chemistrypaper also estimates the annual effective ingestion dose (µSv/y), annual effective inhalation dose (µSv/y) and total effective dose (µSv/y) attributable to radon in drinking water samples. Spatial patterns for the observed variations have also been interpreted for the dataset obtained over the terrestrial region.