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Radiological Hazards Assessment of Stream sediments at Wadi Diit and Wadi Sermatai area, Southern Eastern Desert, Egypt

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Abstract

The present work used the γ-ray spectrometric data to evaluate the radioactive environmental assessment in Wadi Diit and Wadi Sermatai area. The sediments in the studies area consider important materials inreched with economic minerals such as ilmenite, magnetite, zircon, sphene, apatite, garnet, and rutile are applied in many important industrial applications. Thus, the high emitted radiation from the sediments will serve an adverse health effect. Therefore, the assessment of the radiological hazard indices are very important. In Diit area, the mean concentrations of 238U, 232Th, and 40K are 29.25 ± 14.79, 17.92 ± 10.61 and 347.63 Bq kg− 1, respectively, which is lower than the worldwide average value. At the same time, in Sermati area, the mean of activity concentration 238U (37.46 ± 12.79 Bq kg− 1) and 40K (798.15 ± 277.12 Bq kg− 1) is exceeded the worldwide value, and 232Th was not exceeded (22.88 ± 8.86 Bq kg− 1). The obtained radiological hazards parameters depicted that public exposure to emitted gamma radiation cannot induce various dangerous health effects.

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Data available on reasonable request from the authors.

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  1. Nuclear Materials Authority (NMA), Cairo, Egypt

    Ibrahim Gaafar, Mona Fawzy, Mohamed Diab & Mohamed Hanfi

  2. Ural Federal University, Mira Street 19, 620002, Ekaterinburg, Russia

    Mohamed Hanfi

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  1. Ibrahim Gaafar
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  2. Mona Fawzy
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Ibrahim Gaafar, Mona Fawzy and Mohamed Diab designed the research, performed the research, analyzed the data, and wrote the paper. Mohamed Hanfi developed the idea for the study.

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Correspondence to Mohamed Hanfi.

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Gaafar, I., Fawzy, M., Diab, M. et al. Radiological Hazards Assessment of Stream sediments at Wadi Diit and Wadi Sermatai area, Southern Eastern Desert, Egypt. J Radioanal Nucl Chem 331, 1795–1806 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10967-022-08247-8

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