2005 Volume 4 Issue 3 Pages 213-218
A number of consumer's goods which contain natural uranium and thorium are circulated in the familiar living environment. Based on various kinds of information sources, 20 kinds of these consumer's goods were collected and their radioactive concentrations were measured by using ICP-MS and Ge semiconductor detector. As this result, it was found that the concentrations of uranium and thorium in the consumer's goods used at home and industries were below 34Bq/g and below 270Bq/g, respectively. Next, the concentrations of daughter nuclides were not so different from the ones of uranium or thorium, which showed that the secular radioactive equilibrium held between both concentrations.
In addition, the radiation exposures for public consumer were evaluated when four kinds of typical consumer's goods frequently used in daily life are utilized. The results computed by MCNP-4C code were below 250μSv/y.
