Natural radioactivity hazards of building bricks fabricated from saline soil of two districts of Pakistan

Abstract

Primordial radionuclides in building materials are one of the sources of radiation hazard in dwellings made of those materials. Activity concentrations of primordial radionuclides 40K, 226Ra and 232Th have been measured in house building bricks fabricated from saline soil. Forty samples of the bricks were collected from the brick fabrication sites and brick baking kilns in and around the saline soil areas of the districts of Lahore and Faisalabad in the Punjab province of Pakistan. The technique of gamma-ray spectroscopy using an HPGe detector with a PC-based multi-channel analyser was applied for determination of activity concentrations in the brick samples. The activity mass concentrations of 40K, 226Ra and 232Th measured in the brick samples were respectively 567.7 ± 38.3 (493–631), 28.4 ± 3.8 (23–35), and 56.0 ± 4.6 (46–65) Bq kg−1. The radiological hazards of the bricks were calculated using various models given in the literature. The radium equivalent activity was less than the accepted standard criterion value of 370 Bq kg−1 and the values of other hazard indices were also below their limit values. The radiological hazard parameters of the bricks under investigation have been compared with those from other locations of Pakistan and also from some other countries in Asia.