Abstract
Groundwater is the largest fresh water resource and radon is a radioactive naturally occurring noble gas that may be found anywhere in soil, air and water due to decay of uranium in rocks. It is important to investigate the radon in groundwater to safeguard against the health hazard caused due radon. The results presented here are from radon concentrations measured using RAD7 detector in 9 representative groundwater samples collected from hand pumps from southern parts of Roorkee in Haridwar district of Uttrakhand. Radon activity concentration was found in the range of 0.55+0.22 Bq L-1 to 3.39+0.28 Bq L-1 with an average value of 2.16+0.37 Bq L-1. Radon values were compared with United State Environmental Protection Agency value of 11 Bq L-1. The radon activity trend was found within the permissible limit.
Highlights
The pH, EC and temperatures were recorded using hand held pH meter, EC meter and thermometer, respectively. Radon concentrations in these samples were measured with RAD7 (Fig. 1), an electronic radon detector connected to a RAD-H2O accessory (Durridge Co., USA), within 12 hours of sample collection[9,10]
There was a weak positive correlation of radon with EC and a moderate negative correlation of radon was found with pH and temperature (Table 3) means that there is a tendency of high radon scores to go with low pH and temperature scores
Akawwi (2014)[34] suggested radon concentration increases with temperature and similar results were found by Garg et al.,[22]
Summary
Human beings are vulnerable to more than half of the dose exposure from natural radiation sources[1,2] of the radon (222Rn) and its progeny, produced during the radioactive decay chain of uranium (238U) contributing approximately 55% of internal radiation exposure to human life[3]. Radon coming on to contact with the land surface get mixed with the groundwater depending on various factors and its level depends on the radium concentration. Many researchers have conducted research all over the world for monitoring radon concentrations in different environments and efforts are on to find out the methods to reduce its adverse effects on the human beings[9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16] and on the other side simultaneously finding its applications . 17-19 In Uttarakhand various studies had been carried out in river waters of Garhwal and Shiwalik Himalayas and groundwater of the Doon valley where high radon concentrations have been reported[20,21,22]. In Shivalik Himalyas of Himachal Pradesh[20], the radon
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