Determination of Specific Activities of Radionuclides in Soil and Their Transfer Factor from Soil to Bean and Calculation of Cancer Risk for Bean Consumption in Iran

Nuclear radiation emission by radionuclides causes the diseases, such as cancer or genetic anomalies. Therefore, the study of radioactivity in soil and food as well as calculating the risk of cancer seems essential for foods consumption.
In this research, nine different varieties of beans containing the grain of beans, areal part and their soil cultivated were collected. The specific activity of 226Ra, 232Th, 40K and 137Cs was determined for each sample employing gamma ray spectrometry method using high purity germanium detector with 30% relative efficiency.
The absorbed dose rate in the air in one meter above the ground surface varied from 77.23 to 112.78 in nGy/h. The annual effective dose rate absorbed by adult person from the beans consumption in Iran is in the range of 122.14 to 905.86 in μSv/y. The cancer risk for the different varieties of beans varied from of 1.87 × 10-5 to 1.59 ×10-4 which is less than acceptable value as 10-3.
The specific activities of radionuclides in soils samples are more than average of world wide range. The absorbed dose rate from bean consumption for the most of Varieties is more than of world average. Cancer risk resulted from bean consumption is less than acceptable value and consumption of bean has no risk for population health.