Assessment of committed effective dose due to consumption of Red Sea coral reef fishes collected from the local market (Sudan)

An assessment of committed effective dose (CED) due to consumption of Red Sea fish containing ''2''1''0Po and ''1''3''7Cs was performed for 23 different marine fish samples collected from the local market at Port Sudan. The fish were classified according to their feeding habits into three categories: carnivores, herbivores, and omnivores. Measured activity concentrations of 2''1''0Po were found in the ranges 0.25-6.42 (carnivores), 0.7- 5 (omnivores) and 1.5-3.8 (herbivores) Bq/kg fresh weight. In the same study, activity concentrations of Cs-137 were determined to be in the ranges 0.1-0.46 (carnivores), 0.09-0.35 (omnivores) and 0.09-0.32 (herbivores) Bq/kg fresh weigh, which were several times lower than those of ''2''1''0Po. Appropriate conversion factors were used to derive the CED, which was found to be 0.012, 0.01 and 0.01 (μSv/Yr) in carnivores, omnivores and herbivores, respectively, for ''1'''3''7Cs. This contributes about 0.4% of the total dose exclusively by ingestion of fish. For ''2''1''0Po, it was found to be 3.47, 4.81and 4.14 (μSv/Yr) in carnivores, omnivores and herbivores, respectively, which represents 99.6% of the total dose (exclusively by ingestion of fish ). The results of CED calculations suggest that the dose received by the Sudanese population from the consumption of marine fish is rather small and that the contribution of ''1''3''7Cs is negligible compared to ''2''1''0Po.(Author)