Radon concentration measurement and effective dose assessment in different brands of commercial bottled water produced in China

Abstract

Radon and its progeny often exist in daily drinking water, and may pose a potential health threat to the public. In this study, the radon concentrations of 15 different brands of bottled drinking water and their radiological hazards were measured and evaluated. The results indicate that the concentration range of radon in water is 13.3 ± 4.7 to 300.0 ± 21.6 mBq/L, and is lower than the limit level (11.11 Bq/L). The results compared with radon concentrations from other countries or regions show that the radon concentrations in this study are almost within the range of those of all the others. The average annual effective dose for infants, children and adults in the three age-groups is 0.657, 0.535 and 0.665 μSv/y respectively, which is lower than the recommended level of 0.1 mSv/y. The results also show that the bottled water does not pose a major health hazard to the public. Moreover, combined with statistical analysis, it is concluded that the concentration of TDS and Ca2+ in bottled mineral water has a strong correlation with the radon concentration in the water.

Assessment of radiation dose hazards caused by radon and its progenies in tap water by the human dosimetric model

“…The concentration of radon in the sample was measured by FD216, an environmental radon measurement instrument based on the scintillation chamber method, and its principle and structure are shown in Figure 1. Detailed experimental methods and procedures are described in the previous work (Yong et al 2020).…”

Age-dependent Radiological Risk Assessment of Radon (222Rn) in Samples of Commercial Bottled Water from Benin City, Nigeria

“…Having obtained the values for the radon concentrations in the bottled water, a calculation of the yearly effective dosage of radon from ingestion ( 𝜇𝑆𝑣/𝑦 ) based on equation ( 1) was made [15,16,6,8,17]…”

“…As per [15], the mean effective doses of radon due to inhalation ( 𝐴𝐸𝐷 inh ) in drinking water samples were calculated [6,18]:…”

“…where 𝐴𝐸𝐷 𝐼𝑛ℎ is the effective dose for inhalation, C 𝑅𝑛𝑊 is the radon concentration in water, 𝑅 𝑎.𝑊 is the ratio of radon in air to radon in tap water (1 × 10 −4 ), F is the equilibrium factor between radon and its decay products (0.4), O is the average indoor occupancy time per person (7000 h/y) and 𝐷 𝐶𝐹 is the Dose Conversion Factor for radon exposure. Infants, children, and adults consume approximately 260, 350, and 730 litres of water per year, respectively [18,19] and the ingested dose conversion factor per age group are 2.3 × 10 −8 , 5.9 × 10 −9 , and 3.5 × 10 −9 (Sv/Bq) respectively [15,6,8,17].…”

“…The sachet water consumed in Damaturu, Yobe State, Nigeria, as reported by [5], has some level of radiological implications due to radon contamination. [6] measured the radon concentrations of 15 different brands of commercial bottled drinking water produced in China and assessed the impacts on human health from commercial bottled water. The relationship between different mineral content and radon concentration in drinking mineral-water was also explored.…”