Evaluate the Radioactivity in Drinking Water from Kakuri, Kaduna

Abstract

Small traces of radioactivity are normally found in all drinking water. The concentration and composition of these radioactive constituents vary from place to place, depending principally on the radiochemical composition of the soil and rock strata through which the raw water may have passed. The aims of this work were to analyze and determine the gross concentration of alpha and beta radiation in drinking water. Ten water samples from hand-dug (HD) well (5) and borehole (BH) (5) were selected applied stratified random sampling technique from kakuri. Results of the measurements reveal that gross alpha and beta activity were presence in all the water samples investigated; the gross alpha activities range between 0.014±0.006Bq/l to 0.072±0.022Bq/l, with average of 0.037±0.014Bq/l, and gross beta activities range between 0.200±0.041Bq/l to 1.530±0.140Bq/l, with average of 0.6132±0.104Bq/l. The hand-dug well and borehole were not radioactively contaminated, the obtained values were all below the World Health Organization (WHO) and International Organization on Standardization (ISO) drinking water guideline values of 1.0Bq/l for gross beta radioactivity and 0.5Bq/l for gross alpha radioactivity per year. Hence, groundwater from the area is radioactivity safe to use, it posed no threat to the health of people around the area when consumed, besides transformer borehole (BH08) sample which exhibit high beta activity, therefore; borehole (BH08) sample is not drinkable because it’s not safe of radioactivity.