Assessment of natural radioactivity in rice and their associated population dose estimation

The concentration of natural radioactivity in rice is an important parameter for the determination of population exposure by the ingestion of natural radionuclides during habitual consumption of food. All types of food including rice contain a detectable amount of natural radioactivity which successively relocate into the human body via the ingestion pathway. Rice is the main cultivated crop in Bangladesh and most of the Bangladeshi people consume rice as their staple food. Hence, studies on the evaluation of natural radioactivity in rice have been performed by gamma-ray spectrometry using High Purity Germanium (HPGe) detector in order to estimate various radiation hazards due to rice consumption. The average activity levels of natural radionuclides 226Ra, 228Ra and 40K in the rice samples were 1.09 ± 0.31, 0.17 ± 0.21 and 4.70 ± 1.59 Bq kg−1, respectively. The estimated effective doses for the respective radionuclides caused by the rice consumption were 43.69, 16.39 and 4.15 µSv y−1, respectively which was below the UNSCEAR compiled value. The calculated excess lifetime cancer risk (ELCR) values via rice consumption were found below the acceptable limit of 0.29 × 10−3 for radiological risk.