FFA Study on Activity Concentration of Natural Radionuclides of Building Materials in Pachal, Tiruvannamalai Dist, Tamilnadu, India

Affiliation

¹Department of Physics, Aarupadai Veedu Institute of Technology, Paiyanoor- 603 104, Chennai, Tamilnadu, India

²Post Graduate and Research Department of Physics, Government Arts College, Thiruvanamalai-606603, Tamilnadu, India

³Department of Physics, Vel Tech (Owned by RS Trust) Avadi, Chennai-600 062, Tamilnadu, India

⁴Department of Physics, Peri Institutie of Technology, Mannivakkam, Chennai - 600 048, Tamilnadu, India

Citation

Ravishankar, R., et al. FFA Study on Activity Concentration of Natural Radionuclides of Building Materials in Pachal, Tiruvannamalai dist, Tamilnadu, India. (2015) J Environ Health Sci 1(1): 1-5.

Abstract

This paper presents the finding of a study undertaken to determine the natural radioactivity present in building materials in Pachal of Tiruvannamalai District, Tamilnadu. During this study, the samples of commonly used raw materials for buildings were collected and analyzed for primordial radio nuclides by gamma ray spectrometry using NaI (TI) detector. The specific activities of ²²⁶Ra, ²³²Th and ⁴⁰K were measured in the samples. The radium-equivalent activity (Ra_eq) of the samples was calculated and compared with similar data obtained in other countries that are reported in the literature. The comparison reveals that Ra_eq values obtained in our study area fall far below the criterion limit specified in building materials. The potential radiological hazard of the different samples was estimated using different approaches. These values were compared with the published data and were found to be within the acceptable limits. The results show that these materials are quite safe to be used as building materials.