Radiological study on newly developed composite corn advance lines in Malaysia

Abstract

Owing to population growth, there has been high demand for food across the world, and hence, different agricultural activities such as use of phosphate fertilizers, recycling of organic matters, etc, have been deployed to increase crop yields. In Malaysia, a total of nine composite corn advance lines have been developed at the Institute of Biological Sciences, University of Malaya and are being grown under different conditions with a bid to meet the average daily human need for energy and fiber intake. To this end, the knowledge of radioactivity levels in these corn advance lines are of paramount importance for the estimation of possible radiological hazards due to its consumption. Hence, the radioactivity concentrations of 226 Ra, 228 Ra and 40 K in the corn have been determined using HPGe γ-ray spectrometry. The activity concentrations in the corn ranged from 0.05 to 19.18 Bq kg −1 for 226 Ra, from 0.10 to 3.22 Bq kg −1 for 228 Ra and from 26.4 to 129 Bq kg −1 for 40 K. In order to ascertain the radiological safety of the population regarding maize consumption, the daily intakes of these radionuclides as well as the annual effective dose were estimated. The total effective dose obtained due to the ingestion of radionuclides via maize consumption is 15.39 μSv y −1 , which is less than the international recommendations.

Activity concentrations of 226^Ra, 232^Th, and 40^K in common maize meal consumed in Namibia and their potential radiation hazards

“…The obtained mean activities of 40 K, 226 Ra and 232 Th has been compared with those reported from other countries (Table 2). It shows that the activity of 40 K, 226 Ra and 232 Th in maize meal sold in Windhoek, Namibia is lower than the reported maize meal range for the populations of Tanzania, Malaysia and Iran respectively (Olatunji et al, 2014;Nkuba and Sungita, 2017;Changizi et al, 2013).…”

“…Worldwide, maize is one among most commonly consumed staple foods. This has necessitated studies on radionuclides concentrations in maize meal samples in different regions around the globe (Nkuba and Sungita, 2017;Changizi et al, 2013;Olatunji et al, 2014). The measurement of natural radionuclides in food is relevant in quantifying radiological risk to humans due to ingestion (IAEA, 1989).…”

Natural Radionuclide (Gamma and Alpha Emitters) in Grain Samples Collected from Kerbala Governorate, Iraq

“…where, I mean consumption rate of grains samples in unit (Kg/y) which taken from previous studies [20][21][22][23][24][25][26], A i is the speci c activity for gamma emitters, and CF i is conversion factor in unit Sv/Bq that equal 2.80×10 -7 for 238 U ( 226 Ra), 2.30×10 -7 for 232 Th, and 6.20×10 -9 for 40 K [27].…”

Cadmium-109 Radioisotope Adsorption onto Polypyrrole Coated Sawdust of Dryobalanops aromatic: Kinetics and Adsorption Isotherms Modelling

“…Finally, the effect of temperature on sorption of 109 Cd was studied by varying the temperature of 109 Cd solution in the range of 25–50°C. The radioactivity (Bq L –1 ) of 109 Cd was analyzed using γ–ray spectrometry by means of a p–type coaxial HPGe detector having 28.2% relative efficiency and an energy resolution of 1.67 keV –full width at half maximum (FWHM) at the 1332.5 keV peak of 60 Co, which was coupled to a desktop based multi–channel analyzer card system for data acquisition [ 19 , 20 ] The removal efficiency and amount of radioactivity adsorbed (Bq/g) by PPy/SD were calculated using the eqs (1) and (2) , respectively: Where RE is the removal efficiency (%), C 0 is the initial radioactivity of the 109 Cd solution and C e is the radioactivity of the supernatant solution, m is the amount of the adsorbent, q is the adsorbed amount of radioactivity (Bq/g) and V i and V f are the volumes of solution before and after adsorption. Both isotherm and kinetic models were evaluated for the adsorption process.…”