Environmental risk assessment of radioactivity and heavy metals in soil of Toplica region, South Serbia

Abstract

Activity levels of natural and artificial radionuclides and content of ten heavy metals (As, Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Mn, Ni, Pb, Zn and Hg) were investigated in 41 soil samples collected from Toplica region located in the south part of Serbia. Radioactivity was determined by gamma spectrometry using HPGe detector. The obtained mean activity concentrations ± standard deviations of radionuclides Ra,Th, K andCs were 29.9 ± 9.4, 36.6 ± 11.5, 492 ± 181 and 13.4 ± 18.7 Bq kg, respectively. According to Shapiro-Wilk normality test, activity concentrations of Ra andTh were consistent with normal distribution. External exposure from radioactivity was estimated through dose and radiation risk assessments. Concentrations of heavy metals were measured by using ICP-OES, and their health risks were then determined. Enrichment by heavy metals and pollution level in soils were evaluated using the enrichment factor, the geoaccumulation index (I), pollution index and pollution load index. Based on GIS approach, the spatial distribution maps of radionuclides and heavy metal contents were made. Spearman correlation coefficient was used for correlation analysis between radionuclide activity concentrations and heavy metal contents.

Ecological Risk Index and Their Associated Health Risk Evaluation of Toxic Heavy Metals in Cultivated Vegetable and Cereal in Different Peri-Urban Regions of an Indian Metropolitan City, Lucknow

“…In a previous study, Krishna and Mohan, (2016) were observed that the less carcinogenic risk hazards in adults than children via agricultural surface soil around an industrial area, India. In few other studies, similar results were observed in several other regions of the world (Diami et al, 2016;Narsimha and Ranjitha, 2018;Stevanovic et al, 2018;Zhaoyong et al, 2018;Adimalla and Wang, 2018).…”

Risk assessment of human exposure to radionuclides in soil of urban areas (public parks and open playgrounds) in Krusevac, Serbia

“…where A s [Bqkg -1 ] is the mean spe cific ac tiv ity of a partic u lar radionuclide, SD(A s ) [Bqkg -1 ] -the sam ple standard de vi a tion, n -the sam ple size (18), and t 0.95,n -1the 0.95 quantile of the Stu dent's t dis tri bu tion with n -1 de grees of free dom (t 0.95,17 = 1.740) [27]. Most of ten, en vi ron men tal datasets are char acter ized by pos i tive skew ness, and con se quently, a lognormal dis tri bu tion is ap plied to model those data and com pute the var i ous up per lim its.…”

“…These sam ples were col lected from the three big gest and most forested parks. This fea ture can be ex plained by the high 137 Cs ac tiv ity of the for ested land that is rich in or ganic mat ter due to de com posed plant ma te ri als, with the abil ity to ad sorb ce sium onto humic sub stances that slows down the mi gra tion of 137 Cs in the soil [18,33].…”

“…Much con cern has been ad dressed over the prob lem of soil con tam i na tion with heavy met als and or ganic pol lut ants due to rapid in dus tri aliza tion and ur ban iza tion [3,[7][8][9][10]. At the same time, var i ous radioecological stud ies per formed in Ser bia have been aimed mainly to a de ter mi na tion of the content of radionuclides in ur ban soil of dif fer ent land uses, not ex clu sively pub lic green ar eas, es ti mat ing only risks and health haz ards from the ex ter nal ra di ation ex po sure of the pop u la tion with out tak ing into ac -count spe cific ex po sure sce nar ios [2,4,[11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18]. The lit er a ture re view has shown that there are no data on the ap pli ca tion of US EPA health risk as sess ment meth od ol ogy due to ra di a tion ex po sure of hu mans in Ser bia.…”

A Study on the Possible Relationship between Physico-Chemical Properties of the Covering Soil and the Mobility of Radionuclides and Potentially Toxic Elements in a Recultivated Spoil Bank

“…Many studies that include the determination of total PTE concentrations have been conducted [27][28][29][30][31][32][33]. However, total concentrations might provide inadequate information about the potential mobilization and associated risk of PTEs in soils [34,35].…”