Radiological Health Risk Assessment of Vegetables Dried Along Major Highways in Northwestern Nigeria

Abstract

The ever presence of radionuclides in the environment made necessary the continuous assessment of health risks posed by these elements. Dried samples of five (5) commonly consumed vegetables were obtained from 4 different highway roads across the seven states of the North-Western geopolitical region of Nigeria and the concentrations of Naturally occurring radionuclides ( 238 U, 232 Th and 40 K) were determined using NaI (Tl) gamma spectrometry. Health risk to humans due to the consumption of the radionuclides in the studied vegetables was assessed by estimating the daily intake of the radionuclides and cancer risks associated with the radionuclides. The mean annual effective dose for the four highways due to ingestion of radionuclides were found to be 184 μSv y -1 , 174 μSv y -1 , 197 μSv y -1 and 178 μSv y -1 for H1, H2, H3 and H4 respectively. The respective cancer risks factors for these highways were estimated as 9.2 × 10 -6 , 8.7 × 10 -6 , 9.8 × 10 -6 and 8.9 ×10 -6 all of which were lower than the world average of 4.5 × 10 −3 respectively. The results further showed the associated health risk due to the ingestion of the samples is very low.