Laser-Induced Fluorimetry has been used to measure the concentration of uranium in the ground water samples collected from the selected study locations of Bangalore city, India. The concentration of uranium in the collected water samples is found to be in the range 0.24 μg/l to 770.1 μg/l, with a geometric mean (GM) value of 18.9 μg/l. About 35% of the water samples show the concentration of uranium above the safe limit of 30 μg/l, set by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA). The annual effective dose associated with the ingestion of uranium by the adult population of the region has been estimated using the International Commission on Radiation Protection (ICRP) and World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines. Few physicochemical parameters of water such as pH, Total dissolved solids (TDS), major cations, major anions, and trace elements were also measured. The correlation coeffi cient among the measured parameters was determined to fi nd the dependence, if any, on the concentration of uranium in the water samples.
Tungsten oxide (WO 3 ) filled Isophthalic polyester based polymer composites were fabricated by open mould cast technique. The gamma shielding ability of the composites was investigated using gamma ray spectrometer for 80, 127, 356, 662, 1170 & 1332 keV gamma rays in detail and several shielding parameters were estimated to decide the shielding effectiveness of the polymer composites. The results show that, the linear attenuation coefficient increases upon adding tungsten oxide into the matrix and decreases with increase in the energy of gamma photons and is found to be maximum for 80 keV gamma rays. The half value layer thickness, tenth value layer thickness and relaxation length were found to decrease with increase in the filler Wt %, whereas, they were found to increase with increase in energy. XCOM & WinXCOM computer codes were used to estimate the electron density and Z eff of the composites theoretically. ISO + 50 Wt % WO 3 composite is found to be just 18 % heavy with respect to lead and show better performance than lead at 80 keV and baryte at 127 keV and is almost comparable to steel and concrete in the higher energy range. Thus, lead (Pb) can be replaced by ISO + 50 Wt % WO 3 composite for low energy gamma shielding applications.
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