1Department of Physics, University College of Engineering, Osmania University, Hyderabad - 500 007, India
2Department of Physics, University College of Science, Osmania University, Hyderabad - 500 007, India
3Chaitanya Bharathi Institute of Technology, Gandipet, Hyderabad - 500 075, India
*Corresponding author: Email: ch_gopalreddy@yahoo.com
Online published on 7 April, 2014.
An attempt has been made in the present paper to study the radon and thoron levels in the indoors of fertilizer stockyards of urban Hyderabad, India using solid state nuclear track detector (SSNTD) based twin-chamber cup dosimeters. The estimated levels of radon in four quarters at different locations were found to vary between 6 and 198 Bq m−3 with an overall arithmetic mean of 65.2 ± 25.7 Bq m−3, while thoron levels were between below detection level and 199 Bq m−3 with an arithmetic mean of 39.9 ± 17.6 Bq m−3. The radon levels were found to be relatively high in stockyard environs when compared to control dwellings. However, the dose rates are not significantly high when compared to those of control dwellings and this is attributed to the lower occupancy in fertilizer stockyards
Radon/Thoron levels, fertilizer stockyards, SSNTDs, dose rates
