Spatial distribution of radium in coastal marine waters of Tamil Nadu.

Hemalatha, P.; Jha, S.; Rajaram, S.; Puranik, V.

An investigation on the distribution of radium activity levels in the entire south eastern coast of Tamil Nadu, India, from Chennai to Kanyakumari was carried out. Insitu preconcentration technique was adopted by passing 1,000 L of seawater through MnO impregnated cartridge filters at all the locations. In the coastal waters, Ra and Ra concentration was observed to be in the range of 1 to 1.81 and 3.1 to 7.5 mBq/L, respectively with an average of 1.52 and 4.53 mBq/L. respectively, while the sediment samples showed Ra activity levels from 8.1 to 129.0 Bq/kg and Ra varied from 14.7 to 430.01 Bq/kg. The Kd values for Ra was observed to be from 5.3E03 to 3.5E05 L/kg and for Ra it was in the range of 2.3E03 to 5.9E04. It was observed that the concentration of Ra was more than Ra in all the locations. The spatial distribution of the activity with respect to location is discussed in the paper. The radioactive database obtained, represents reference values for coastal environment of Tamil Nadu.

TAMIL Nadu (India); INDIA; RADIUM; SEAWATER; MANGANESE oxides; TERRITORIAL waters; SEDIMENTS; RADIOACTIVITY

Journal of Radioanalytical & Nuclear Chemistry, 2012, Vol 294, Issue 2, p203

0236-5731

Academic Journal

10.1007/s10967-011-1521-0