The investigation of natural radioactivities and hazard index for soil sampls around Pshdar region in Iraq

The main aim of this project is to evaluate the activity concentrations of naturally occurring materials associated with the 238U, 235U, 232Th decay chains and the long-lived natural occurring radionuclide 40K in environmental samples. The soil samples were collected from the Pshdar area was determined by means of a gamma-ray spectrometry system using a High pureity germanium (HpGe) detector in a low background configuration. It was found that the activity concentrations of 226Ra, 232Th and 40K were ranging from 7.6±1,0 Bq kg-1 to 23.5±1.7 Bq kg-1, 2.50 Bq/kg to 31.8±2.2 Bq kg-1 and 77.6±7.8 Bq kg-1 to 554.5±42.7 Bq kg-1, respectively. The value of the absorbed dose rate indoor, the absorbed dose rate outdoor, the annual effective dose, the radium equivalent activity, the external hazard index, the internal hazard index and the gamma index in the soil samples were also determined and found to have a range of 14.25 nGy h-1 to 85.23 nGyh-1, 7.33 nGyh-1to 45.08 nGy h-1, 0.07 mSv to 0.42 mSv, 15.71 Bq kg-1 to 96.12 Bq kg-1, 0.04 to 0.26, 0.07 to 0.32, 0.07 to 0.34, respectively. The results indicate that the radiation hazard from primordial radionuclides in all soil samples from the area studied in this current work is not significant.