Assessment of Committed Effective Dose due to consumption of Red Sea coral reef fishes collected from the local market (Sudan)

Abstract

An assessment of Committed Effective Dose (CED) due to consumption of Red Sea fish containing 210Po and 137Cs was performed for 23 different marine fish samples collected from the local market at Port Sudan. The fish were classified according to their feeding habits into three categories: carnivores, herbivores, and omnivores. Measured activity concentrations of 210Po were found in the ranges 0.25–6.42 (carnivores), 0.7–5 (omnivores) and 1.5–3.8 (herbivores) Bq/kg fresh weight. In the same study, activity concentrations of Cs-137 were determined to be in the ranges 0.1–0.46 (carnivores), 0.09–0.35 (omnivores) and 0.09–0.32 (herbivores) Bq/kg fresh weight, which were several times lower than those of 210Po. Appropriate conversion factors were used to derive the CED, which was found to be 0.012, 0.01 and 0.01 (µSv/yr) in carnivores, omnivores and herbivores, respectively, for 137Cs. This contributes about 0.4% of the total dose exclusively by ingestion of fish. For 210Po, it was found to be 3.47, 4.81 and 4.14 (µSv/yr) in carnivores, omnivores and herbivores, respectively, which represents 99.6% of the total dose (exclusively by ingestion of fish). The results of CED calculations suggest that the dose received by the Sudanese population from the consumption of marine fish is rather small and that the contribution of 137Cs is negligible compared to 210Po.