A review: Natural and artificial radionuclides and radiation hazard parameters in the soil of mountain regions in Serbia

Abstract

This review paper discusses the content of natural ( 40 K, 238 U, 226 Ra, and 232 Th) and artificial ( 137 Cs) radionuclides in the soil of the mountains of Maljen, Tara and Kopaonik in the Republic of Serbia over 2002-2015. In addition, the paper gives radiation hazard parameters, i.e., radium equivalent activity, absorbed dose rate, annual effective dose equivalent, external hazard index, annual gonadal dose equivalent, and excess lifetime cancer risk outdoors that we calculated from the obtained content of the natural radionuclides in the soil samples. We compared the parameters to previously published results for different parts of the country and looked into the radioecological status of the investigated areas.