Open AccessGross alpha and beta activities in drinking water from Goiás state, Brazil
Author(s) -
Raquel Maia Mingote,
Regina Apolinária Nogueira,
Heliana Ferreira da Costa
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
brazilian journal of radiation sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2319-0612
DOI - 10.15392/bjrs.v7i3.410
Subject(s) - alpha (finance) , environmental science , natural radioactivity , beta (programming language) , water quality , radiochemistry , nuclear medicine , mathematics , chemistry , statistics , medicine , physics , radionuclide , biology , nuclear physics , cronbach's alpha , ecology , computer science , programming language , descriptive statistics
Detection of gross alpha and beta radioactivity is important for a quick surveying of both natural and anthropogenic radioactivity in water. Furthermore, gross alpha and gross beta parameters are included in Brazilian legislation on quality of drinking water. In this work, a low background liquid scintillation spectrometer was used to simultaneously determine gross alpha and gross beta in samples of the public water supplies in the state of Goiás, Brazil, during 2010-2015. Sample preparation involved evaporation to concentrate the sample ten-fold. The results indicate that the water meets the radioactivity standards required by the regulations MS 2914/2011 of the Brazilian Department of Health. Concerning the high level of censored observations, a statistical treatment of data was conducted by using analysis methods of censored data to provide a reference value of the gross alpha and beta radioactivity in drinking water from the state of Goiás. The estimated typical activities are very low, 0.030 Bq.L-1 and 0.058 Bq.L-1, for gross alpha and gross beta, respectively.