Abstract
Food safety concerns associated with radiotoxicity risks among consumers are widespread in areas with human activities such as mining. Therefore, the study was carried out to determine natural radioactivity levels in total diets in an area with excessive mining activities. Using validated models, the committed effective dose and excess cancer risk were calculated for consumers based on the activity concentration, food intake, exposure frequency, exposure duration, dose, and risk conversion factors. In addition, the percentage contribution of each radionuclide to the committed effective dose was determined. The results showed that the levels of activity concentration of 226Ra (0.17 Bq/kg), 228Ra (0.10 Bq/kg), 228Th (0.08 Bq/kg) and 40K (33.2 Bq/kg) were below global reference values (0.5–80 Bq/kg). The corresponding order of the total committed effective dose for age groups was: 0.179 mSv/year (adults) < 0.485 mSv/year (children) < 0.571 mSv/y (adolescents) < 0.634 mSv/year (toddlers) and exceeded the typical level (0.3 mSv/year) with the exception of adults. 40K in diets from this study was the highest contributor (48%) to committed effective dose, followed by 228Ra (35%), 226Ra (16%) and 228Th (1%) respectively. Radionuclide-specific excess cancer risk was found to increase in this order: 228Th (7 × 10–8) < 40K (3 × 10–7) < 226Ra (2 × 10–6) < 228Ra (3 × 10–6). This study showed that both radionuclide-specific and cumulative excess cancer risks (5.5 × 10–6) were all within the protective range (1 × 10–4–1 × 10–6).
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Anyimah-Ackah, Ekpor; Ofosu, Isaac W.; Lutterodt, Herman Erick; Darko, Godfred (2020), “Exposure factors through cassava, maize, rice, tomato, and yam diets”, Mendeley Data, V1, https://doi.org/10.17632/6h6nv4d6xk.1
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The study is grateful to the Radiation Protection Institute of the Ghana Atomic Energy Commission for technical support.
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EA-A: conceptualization, investigation, methodology, software, data curation, writing-original draft preparation, IWO: oversight, data curation, writing-review and editing, HEL: supervision, visualization, writing-reviewing and editing, GD: supervision, writing-reviewing and editing, DOK: resources, validation, writing-reviewing and editing.
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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. This study was approved by the Committee on Human Research and Publications Ethics (CHPRE) of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) and Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) (CHRPE/AP/357/17).
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Anyimah-Ackah, E., Ofosu, I.W., Lutterodt, H.E. et al. Excess lifetime cancer risk and committed effective dose associated with dietary exposure to radioactivity of natural origin from mining areas. J Consum Prot Food Saf 16, 219–225 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00003-021-01332-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00003-021-01332-2