Measurement of radon concentration in ground water of some regions of Kullu, Mandi and Kangra districts of Himachal Pradesh, using active technique (RAD7), India

Radon originates from the radioactive decay of naturally occurring uranium and radium deposits. These elements can be found, in trace amounts, in almost all soils and rocks. Being a gas, radon can escape from mineral surfaces and dissolve in ground water, which can carry it away from its point of origin. We rarely find radon in significant concentrations in surface waters, due to its rapid dispersal into the atmosphere. Typical groundwater sources average between 200 and 600 pCi/L of radon. Roughly 10 percent of public drinking water supplies have concentrations of over 1000 pCi/L, and around 1 percent exceed 10,000 pCi/L. Smaller water systems appear to be disproportionally affected by high concentration of radon. Radon was first noticed in water supplies by J.J. Thomson, a pioneer in the science of radioactivity, in the first decade of the 1900s. At first, scientists and doctors believed radioactivity to have benign, even curative, effects on the human body. Open water monitoring often requires continuous, fast-response radon measurement at high sensitivity for ground water in situ it is usually more convenient to use the RAD7. So, in the present work RAD7 have been employed to measure the concentration of radon, in ground water of some regions of Kullu and Mandi districts of Himachal Pradesh. The radon concentration in water samples has been found to vary from 0.740 ± 0.91 to 19.2 ± 3.5 Bq/l. This study reports the variation of radon concentration in different regions of these areas. (author)