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Radiological survey of geothermal water resources in Romania and dose estimation from their use in balneotherapy

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Abstract

Romania has a long history and tradition of balneotherapy, with hundreds of thousands of tourists and locals practicing internal and external geothermal water cures to treat various ailments. Radiological data regarding these water resources is limited and consumers are unaware of the potential exposure to radiation resulted from ingestion. In this regard, the present study performed a radiological investigation on 25 geothermal water samples collected from different bays and spa centers in the western and north-western parts of Romania. Gross alpha and beta measurements revealed activities ranging from 0.02 ± 0.003 to 2.10 ± 0.41 Bq/L, respectively 0.04 ± 0.01 to 2.05 ± 0.47 Bq/L. 226Ra activities were in the 20 ± 1–1782 ± 124 mBq/L interval, and 222Rn values ranged between 1 ± 0.02 and 209 ± 21 Bq/L. The conformity of the obtained values with national and international regulations regarding drinking water was assesed. The values were generally low and in accordance to those obtained in other countries, the highest activity values were identified near Herculane bay and Felix bay areas. The contribution of 226Ra to the annual effective dose resulted from ingestion of the investigated geothermal waters were calculated.

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Data availability

All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article. R-CB—conceptualization, methodology, validation, supervision, data curation. C-FS—methodology, data curation, writing—original draft. DKS—visualization. EG—formal analysis.

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the financial support from “Babes-Bolyai” University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania, which provided a scientific scholarship. The funding sources had no involvement in study design, collection, analysis and interpretation of data, writing of the report or in the decision to submit the article for publication.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, “Babeş-Bolyai” University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania

    Robert-Cs. Begy, Codrin-F. Savin, David K. Süle & Evangelos Giagias

  2. Interdisciplinary Research Institute on Bio-Nano-Sciences, “Babeş-Bolyai” University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania

    Robert-Cs. Begy

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Correspondence to Codrin-F. Savin.

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Begy, RC., Savin, CF., Süle, D.K. et al. Radiological survey of geothermal water resources in Romania and dose estimation from their use in balneotherapy. Eur. Phys. J. Spec. Top. 232, 1595–1605 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1140/epjs/s11734-023-00883-9

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