Most building materials contain naturally occurring radioactive elements, the most important of which are 40K and the members of two natural radioactive series, Baring cosmic component, major portion of natural sources comes from 40K and progenies of 232Th and 238U present in the soil, Rock, Sand and cement. Person under the modern lifestyle circumstances is prone to the internal and external radiation exposure and knowledge of natural radioactivity and the estimation of amount of radiation dose received by the public are important. The ASTM procedure was adopted for the collection and preparation of sample. Total of forty environmental samples of five different types (Soil, Stone, Cement, Granite and Sand). Samples were subjected to gamma spectrometry analysis using a high efficiency 4" × 4" NaI (Tl) detector. Finally the method used in determining the level of activity concentration of 238U and 232Th and the 40K. Gamma Dose Rates, AED, Raeq, Hin and Hex of individuals living in the study region will be presented. The main objective of calculating the Raeq is to make an estimate of radiation dose likely to be externally due to gamma radiation. Raeq ranges from 64.93 Bq/kg to 188.0 Bq/kg. The environmental radioactivity and associated external exposure due to gamma radiation from the samples depend mainly on the climatic factors, ventilation of the indoor environment, geochemical formation and composition of the region.
Siddanna et al. (Wed,) studied this question.