Rafat M. Amin and Fawzia Ahmed
Concentrations of naturally occurring radionuclides 226Ra, 232Th and 40K were estimated in spices for the adult population of Egyptian using gamma spectrometry. The average activity concentration values of 226Ra, 232Th and 40K were respectively 40.8, 18.7 and 578.8Bq kg-1. The total annual external gamma effective dose in the stores due to spices ranged between 4.3μSvyr-1 and 26.8μSvyr-1 while the average of annual internal committed effective doses of 11.4, 4.3 and 3.6 μSv yr-1, respectively. The net radiological impact of these radionuclides is 19.3μSv yr-1. This value gives cancer risk factor of 4.8 × 10-5and loss of life expectancy of 0.095 days only. Whereas ICRP cancer risk factor for general public is 2.5 × 10-3 and total risk involve from the all natural radiation sources based on global average annual radiation dose of 2.4 mSv yr-1 is 6.0 × 10-3. The estimated cancer risk shows that probability of increase of cancer risk from Egyptian spices is only a minor fraction of ICRP values. Therefore, the spices do not pose any significant health hazard and is considered radiologically safe for human consumption
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