Biscuits are an important type of food, widely consumed by babies in Iraq and other countries. This work uses gamma spectroscopy to measure the natural radioactivity due to long-lived gamma emitters in children's biscuits; it also estimates radiation hazard indices, that is, the radium equivalent activity, the representative of gamma level index, the internal hazard index, and the annual effective dose in children. Ten samples were collected from the Iraqi market from different countries of origin. The average specific activities for (226)Ra, (232)Th, and (40)K were 9.390, 3.1213, and 214.969 Bq/kg, respectively, but the average of the radium equivalent activity and the internal hazard index were 33.101 Bq/kg and 0.107, respectively. The total average annual effective dose from consumption by adults, children, and infants is estimated to be 0.655, 1.009, and 0.875 mSv, respectively. The values found for specific activity, radiation hazard indices, and annual effective dose in all samples in this study were lower than worldwide median values for all groups; therefore, these values are found to be safe.

A number of international health organizations consider the exposure to residential radon as the second main cause of lung cancer after cigarette smoking. For this, it was found that there is no data base on radon concentrations for the Kufa Technical Institute buildings in literature. This therefore triggers a special need for radon measurement in some Kufa Technical Institute buildings. This study aims to investigate the indoor radon levels inside the Kufa Technical Institute buildings for the first time using different radon measurement methods such as active (RAD-7) and passive methods (LR-115 Type II). Seventy eight of Solid-State Nuclear Track Detectors (SSNTDs) LR-115 Type II was distributed at four buildings within the study area. The LR-115 Type II detectors were exposed in the study area for three months period. In parallel to the latter, seventy two active measurements were conducted using RAD-7 in the same buildings for correlation investigation purposes between the two kinds of measurements (i.e. passive and active).The results demonstrate that the radon concentrations were generally low, which are ranging from 38.4 to 77.2 Bq/m 3 , with a mean value of 50 Bq/m 3 . The mean of the equilibrium equivalent radon concentration and annual effective dose were assessed to be 19.9 Bq/m 3 and 1.2 mS/y respectively; the excess lifetime lung cancer risk was approximately 11.6 per million personal. A high correlation was found between the methods of measurements (i.e. LR-115 Type II and RAD-7), R 2 = 0.99 which is significant at P ˂ 0.001. The results of this work revealed that that Radon concentration was below the action level set by the United States Environmental Protection Agency of 148 Bq/m 3 . This therefore indicates that no radiological health hazard exists. However, the relatively high concentrations in some classrooms can be addressed by the natural ventilation or the classrooms being supplied with suction fans.

In this work, radon concentrations were measured in dwellings Kufa Technical institute, Iraq between November 2014 to February 2015 using time integrated passive radon dosimeters containing LR-115 Type II plastic track detectors. Also, we calculated the concentration of short-lived radon daughters, potential alpha energy, working level month, the annual effective dose rate, the annual equivalent dose rate and the excess lifetime cancer risk in all dwellings under study. The radon concentration in these dwelling ranges from (15.211 ± 2.745 to 32.445 ± 09.200) Bq/m3 with an average of (21.567 Bq/m3), which within the acceptable radon levels (50-150) Bq/m3 recommended by the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP). The mean the excess lifetime cancer risk were found to be ranges from 35.458 to 75.633 with an average value of 50.297 per 106 persons. These values are within in the safe limits recommended by the international organizations.

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