Assessment of Gamma Radiation and Radiological Health Risk of Selected Oil Mill in Gure Community of Khana Local Government Area, Rivers State, Nigeria.

Assessment of Gamma Radiation and Radiological Health Risk of selected Oil mill in Gure Community of Khana Local Government Area Rivers State, Nigeria, has been carried out using a well calibrated digilert 200 radiation meter and global positioning system(GPS). The aim of the study was to assessed the Gamma radiation level of the selected Palm fruit oil mills in the community. Three oil mills were selected and ten (10) strategic locations was considered for the purpose of the study because of the oil mill size. The obtained result for the background ionizing radiation varies from 0.012 to 0.014mR/h, 0.013 to 0.015 mR/h and 0.010 to 0.013 mR/h with mean of 0.014 mR/h, 0.014 mR/h and 0.012 mR/h for Palm Fruit Zone one, Palm fruit Zone Two and Palm Fruit Zone Three respectively. The obtained mean of BIR for Palm Fruit Zone one and Palm Fruit Zone Two are all higher than the recommended safe limit of 0.013 mR/h as stipulated by UNSCEAR (2020) except that of Palm Fruit Zone Three which is within the tolerable limit. The absorbed dose varies 104.4 to 121.8 nGy/h,121.8 to130.5 nGy/h and 87 to 113.1 nGy/h with mean of 117.85 nGy/h,124.41 nGy/h and 104.4 nGy/h and they are all greater than the stipulated safe limit of 84.0 nGy/h while the results of excess life cancer risk varies from 0.60 to 0.70,0.70 to 0.74 and 0.49 to 0.67 with mean 0.68,0.64 and 0.62 for Palm Fruit Zone one, Palm fruit Zone Two and Palm Fruit Zone Three respectively. The obtained result for the ELCR are all greater than the UNSCEAR (2008) recommended safe limit of 0.29 ×10⁻³ and this implied that there is a long term potential radiological health risk due to over exposure. The radiation exposure to different human body organs show that the testes received the higher radiation and the liver received the lower radiation doses and this higher radiation in the testes may be due to its exposure or sensitivity to radiation while that of the liver may be due to its protection with different body tissue. Though, there is no immediate health effects due to the exposure to background ionizing within the selected oil mills but there may be a long term health effects due to over exposure.