A comment on 'Distribution of some natural gamma-emitting radionuclides in the soils of the coastal areas of Nigeria' by Alatise, O.O., Babalola, LA. & Olowofela, J.A. Journal of Environmental Radioactivity 99 (2008) 1746-1749

摘要

With great interest we read the article by Alatise et al. (2008) on naturally occurring radionuclides in Nigerian soils. Unfortunately, the article contains a serious failing with respect to data evaluation and interpretation.rn1. The reported activity concentrations (Table la, lb and 2) are not possible (~(40)K) or extremely questionable (~(238)U and ~(232)Th). Since 1 kg of pure potassium in natural state contains 0.012% ~(40)K corresponding to 30.9 kBq (Magill et al., 2006), the activity concentrations reported in these tables ranging from 112 kBq kg~(-1) soil to 445 kBq kg~(-1) are simply not possible. The authors themselves compared their results with world-wide data and should have recognised that there seems to be a factor of about 10~3 between their findings and published data (e.g. UNSCEAR, 1988). The same dimensions of discrepancy between measured and literature data can be seen for ~(2380)U and ~(232)Th.