Evaluation of gross-alpha and gross-beta activity concentrations and assessment of excess lifetime cancer risk in waters of Eğirdir Lake, Turkey

ABSTRACT

Eğirdir Lake is the fourth largest lake in Turkey and located in Isparta province. It is one of the most important water sources in Göller District. Eğirdir Lake supplies water to the Eğirdir basin and most of the agricultural lands were irrigated through Eğirdir Lake and it is also used as drinking water in adjacent provinces. Evaluating the gross-alpha and gross-beta activity concentrations can be accepted as the first step of determining the natural radioactivity level of water. The aim of this study is to investigate the natural radioactivity level of Eğirdir Lake surface water by measuring gross-alpha and gross-beta activity concentrations. Study was conducted in two different seasons, in order to evaluate the seasonal effect on results. Seasonal average activity concentrations of gross-alpha and gross-beta varied in a range of 0.0125–0.0345 Bq/L and 0.0750–0.1 Bq/L, respectively. Mean activity concentrations of gross-alpha and gross-beta for seasonal averages were 0.0215 ± 0.0057 Bq/L and 0.0833 ± 0.008 Bq/L, respectively. From the measured activities, annual effective dose and excess lifetime cancer risk (ELCR) were calculated. The obtained ELCR results varied in the range of 0.0157%–0.0202% with arithmetic mean of 0.0173%. In addition to that, statistical analyses were carried out in order to investigate the significances of the results. Resultant values exhibited that gross-alpha and gross-beta activities were found to be lower than suggested limits of WHO screening procedure. These results indicated that water consumption-related annual effective dose due to internal irradiation is less than 0.1 mSv/year and the water of Eğirdir Lake is of low risk to use as drinking water and also for multiple purposes.

KEYWORDS:

• Eğirdir Lake
• gross alpha and beta activity
• lognormal distribution
• excess lifetime cancer risk
• radiological hazard

Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the Suleyman Demirel University Department of Scientific Research Projects (BAP) with the project number of 4800-D2-16 andauthors would like to thank to BAP for their supports. This study also an ongoing research as part of PhD thesis with the name of ‘Determination of Natural Radioactivity in Isparta – Eğirdir Lake and Assessment in Terms of Excess Lifetime Cancer Risk’.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.