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Radiological and Chemical Risk Assessment due to High Uranium Contents Observed in the Ground Waters of Mansa District (Malwa Region) of Punjab State, India: An Area of High Cancer Incidence

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Abstract

High uranium concentration is observed in the underground water samples collected from Mansa district (Malwa region) of Punjab State, India. The uranium content in the underground and public water supply samples ranged from 0.13 to 1340 μg/l with a mean value of 211.2 μg/l. Such high values in drinking waters have been earlier observed only in some parts of the world. 81 % of the samples have uranium concentration higher than the recommended guideline value of 30 µg/l by the World Health Organization. On the radiological aspect, the range of cancer mortality risk is from 3.68 × 10−7 to 3.8 × 10−3 with a mean value of 5.99 × 10−4 while that of cancer morbidity risk ranged from 5.70 × 10−7 to 5.87 × 10−3 with a mean value of 9.26 × 10−4, which are quite higher than the acceptable level of 10−4.The chemical toxicity risk (LADD value) was found to range from 0.01 to 101 μg/kg/day with a mean value of 15.9 μg/kg/day, which is quite higher than the recommended level of 1μg/kg/day by the World Health Organization. The hazard quotient was found to be much greater than 1, indicating that groundwater of this area may not be safe for drinking purposes. Higher contents of uranium in drinking water may be one of the causes for higher degree of cancer incidence in this area of study (Malwa region) as compared to the other regions of the Punjab State and that of the national average.

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Acknowledgments

Thanks are due to Dr. Kuldeep Singh, Dr. Rohit Sharma and Dr. Atul Khanna for their constant inspiration for this work. The help provided by Rajbans Kaur and Barjinder Kaur (M.Phil students) for their company in the field work for collection of water samples is gratefully acknowledged. Thanks are due to the residents of this area who supplied us the necessary and useful information and co-operated very liberally for providing us the water samples.

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  1. Department of Physics, Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, 143005, India

    Nisha Sharma & Jaspal Singh

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Correspondence to Nisha Sharma.

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Sharma, N., Singh, J. Radiological and Chemical Risk Assessment due to High Uranium Contents Observed in the Ground Waters of Mansa District (Malwa Region) of Punjab State, India: An Area of High Cancer Incidence. Expo Health 8, 513–525 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12403-016-0215-9

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