DOI: 10.36347/sjpms

Pages: 66-68

The world is naturally radioactive as some of the materials in the nature are radioactive. Uranium is one of them and can be found in trace amount in most rocks and soils. Uranium decays to radium that leads to the decay of radon. Because radon is a noble gas, a large portion of it is free to migrate away from radium. Radon and its progeny are major contributors in the radiation dose received by general population of the world. A sufficient quantity of radon comes out of rock and soil in the environment. The primary sources of indoor radon are soils and rocks source emanations, emanation from building materials, and entry of radon into a structure from outdoor air. Keeping this in mind the study of radon exhalation rate from some soil samples of the villages of Ambala, Haryana has been carried out using Can Technique. The equilibrium radon concentration in various soil samples varied from 30.82 Bqm-3 to 84.52 Bqm-3 with an average of 49.02± 9.21Bqm-3. The radon mass exhalation rates from the soil samples varied from 1.11 to 3.04mBq/kg/h with an average of 1.76 ± 0.33mBq/kg/h and radon surface exhalation rates varied from 25.09 to 68.83mBq/m2/h with an average of 39.92 ± 7.50mBq/m2/h. The radon mass and surface exhalation rates of the soil samples of villages of Ambala, Haryana were lower than that of the world wide average