Natural radioactivity in imported ceramic tiles used in Serbia

Abstract

Ceramic tiles are one of the commonly used decorative building materials. Body of ceramic tiles is a mixture of different raw materials including clays, quartz materials and feldspat, and may be glazed or left unglazed. Due to the presence of zircon in the glaze, ceramic tiles can show natural radioactivity concentration significantly higher than the average values for building materials. This study presents a summary of results obtained by a survey which was consisted of measurements of activity concentrations of natural radionuclides in imported ceramic tile samples used in Serbia using a gamma spectrometer with HPGe detector. Based on the obtained concentrations, gamma index, radium equivalent activity, the indoor absorbed dose rate and the corresponding annual effective dose were evaluated to assess the potential radiological hazard associated with these building materials.

Comparative Study of Natural Radioactivity and Radiological Hazard Parameters of Various Imported Tiles Used for Decoration in Sudan

“…These results are relatively higher than the levels in previously investigated locally produced materials, particularly 238 U [21,22]. However, the activity concentrations of 238 U, 232 Th, and 40 K Bq/kg of ceramic samples in the present study are comparable, with slight variations with other studies in some countries [21,[23][24][25][26][27], as indicated in Table 2. Figure 1 shows a box-plot of 238 U, 232 Th, and 40 K activity concentrations, where the minimum, maximum, and means are presented.…”

“…The range of computed H ex for ceramic samples was between 0.36 and 1.28, with a mean value of 0.74 ± 0.29 (Table 3). Interestingly, about 90% of the values are lower than unity, fitting well with the universal assigned value, showing that these materials are safe for building construction [7,25].…”

Analysing radionuclide content in soil samples and radiological risks in the clayey material surrounding of the “Zbegovi” deposit, Donje Crniljevo, Serbia

“…Some what lower 40 K con cen tration val ues in this pa per, com pared to clays from the Ser bian mar ket, can be in ter preted by dif fer ent way of pre par ing a clayey ma te rial sam ple, or by mea sur ing a sam ple that has not un der gone in dus trial pro cess ing. Mea sured con cen tra tions of radionuclides in the sample of clayey ma te rial from the mine cor re spond to the val ues mea sured in the ce ramic tile as build ing ma terial [28]. Ar ti fi cial radionuclide 137 Cs was be low the de tec tion limit in all three clayey ma te rial sam ples (tab.…”

“…In or der to val i date the re sults ob tained for spe cific ac tiv i ties, ac tiv ity con cen tra tion con ver sion was per formed: 238 U, 232 Th, and 40 K to mass con centra tions of ura nium, tho rium and po tas sium in soil [27,28]. The fol low ing val ues were ob tained: from 0.6 mgkg -1 to 5.7 mgkg -1 for ura nium (mean value 1.9 mgkg -1 ); from 4.4 mgkg -1 to 29.5 mgkg -1 for thorium (mean value 22 mgkg -1 ) and from 0.4 % to 2.4 % for po tas sium (mean value 1.2 %).…”

A Study of Chemical, Mineral Compositions (of Some Metals) and Natural Radioactivity in Porcelain and Ceramic Dinner Ware

“…Such activities would provide the useful data of doses and hazard indices to make them safe in houseware product (Ahmad et al, 2015;Papadopoulos et al, 2013). There are many numbers of work worldwide measured the natural radioactivity of ceramic and porcelain by gamma rays spectroscopy and used their values to determine the doses and the hazard indices, these data are important to human health and compare the results with the recommended limits (Aksoy et al, 2010;Tufail et al, 2010;Janković et al, 2013). The objectives of this study are: 1) Use X-Ray Diffraction and Atomic Absorption techniques to study the Chemical, Mineral, Compositions and Concentrations (of Some Metals) in fifteen local and imported Ceramic and Porcelain dinner wares samples.…”