Radiometric properties of virgin and cultivated soilaround the Shazand Refinery Complex in Iran

Background: one of the main sources of exposure to radiation is terrestrialradionuclides in the environment. these radioisotopes are present in theearth's crust and can be increased by human activity such as mining of coal,oil, and minerals. materials and methods: in this study, 39 soil samplesincluding virgin and cultivated were collected from around of the shazandrefinery complex(src) using a template and experimental method. thegamma spectrometry method was used to measure the specific activity of the226ra, 232th, 40k and 137cs radionuclides. results: the average concentrationsof 226ra, 232th, 40k and 137cs in the cultivated (virgin) soil samples were 21.95 ±0.27 (23.99 ± 0.37), 25.37 ± 0.29 (31.74 ± 0. 38), 416.72 ± 1.88 (461.09 ± 2.68)and 5.13 ± 0.08 (5.51 ± 0.14) in bq kg-1. excess lifetime cancer risk (elcr) wasobtained for cultivated (virgin) soil as 0.19 × 10-3 (0.22 × 10-3), which is closeto the world average (0.29 × 10-3) and lowers than the maximum acceptablevalue (10-3). conclusion: the specific activities of natural radionuclides werein the global range and are lower than the maximum allowable value. thedistribution map of 226ra and 137cs indicated some part of 226ra, distributed asfly ash from a chimney, caused by the incineration of refinery waste. theradiological parameters calculated for both types of soil were lower than themaximum admissible values, and therefore there is no radiological hazard forpeople living in this area.