Evaluation of Some Radioactive Materials and Heavy Metals in Marine Environment of Alexandria Coastline, Egypt

Abstract

The present work is carried out to obtain quantitative information of some natural radioactive materials and heavy metals in water and sediment samples along the Alexandria Coastline, as a step to construct the baseline map of the background radioactivity level in the Egyptian environment and also as a base data to assess the future physicochemical changes of surface coastal water and sediment in the studied area. The distribution of natural gamma emitting radionuclides such as 238 U, 232 Th and 40 K has been established by gamma spectrometry. The results show that the area of Alexandria coast is affected by the existence of high back-ground radiation from the Rashid coast at the eastern side which has high levels of radioisotope concentrations due to black sand deposits which are dominant in this area. The absorbed dose rate (D, nGy•h −1 ), annual effective dose equivalent, external hazard index (H ex ) and representative level index (I r ) of the investigated radioactive materials were calculated. The concentration of Pb 2+ , Cd 2+ , Ni 2+ , Mn 2+ , Cu 2+ , Co 2+ , Zn 2+ and Cr 3+ ions has been determined using Atomic Absorption Spectroscopy. The total dissolved solids (TDS) in water samples ranged from 33,000 mg/l to 42,000 mg/l, the salinity ranged from 37.9% to 40.5% and pH ranged from 7.6 to 7.9. Some of the sediment quality guidelines are calculated and they are the metal pollution index (MPI), the contamination factor (CF), degree of contamination (C deg ), and Pollution load index (PLI).