Radioactivity assessment and lifetime risk survey from bottled water in Iran

Abstract

In the last few years, the tendency to utilization of bottled water has significantly expanded. Therefore, its radioactivity level must be strictly evaluated. This work aims to measure the activity concentrations of gross beta and alpha in bottled drinking water to evaluate its quality and annual effective dose as well as the lifetime risk. The radioactivity of 30 bottled mineral water samples from several brands was analyzed with Wallac Quantulus 1220 LSC. The measurement results showed that the gross beta and alpha activity concentrations in bottled mineral water samples ranged from 29 to 49 mBqL-1 with an average of 38.7 mBqL-1 and 48 to 76 mBqL-1 with an average of 60.8 mBqL-1 respectively. Furthermore, Annual effective doses ranged from 30.11 to 48.3 µSv y-1 with an average value of 38.54 µSv y-1, which is below the 0.1 mSv y−1 as reference dose limit. The variation of lifetime risk is from 1.70 × 10-4 to 2.60 × 10-4 with an average of 2.14 × 10-4. According to this study’s results, radiologically, these bottled mineral waters can be considered safe drinking water in Iran.

Keywords

• annual effective dose
• bottled water
• gross alpha and beta
• lifetime risk