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Comprehensive exposure assessments from the viewpoint of health in a unique high natural background radiation area, Mamuju, Indonesia.

ABSTRACT: Mamuju is one of the regions in Indonesia which retains natural conditions but has relatively high exposure to natural radiation. The goals of the present study were to characterize exposure of the entire Mamuju region as a high natural background radiation area (HNBRA) and to assess the existing exposure as a means for radiation protection of the public and the environment. A cross-sectional study method was used with cluster sampling areas by measuring all parameters that contribute to external and internal radiation exposures. It was determined that Mamuju was a unique HNBRA with the annual effective dose between 17 and 115 mSv, with an average of 32 mSv. The lifetime cumulative dose calculation suggested that Mamuju residents could receive as much as 2.2 Sv on average which is much higher than the average dose of atomic bomb survivors for which risks of cancer and non-cancer diseases are demonstrated. The study results are new scientific data allowing better understanding of health effects related to chronic low-dose-rate radiation exposure and they can be used as the main input in a future epidemiology study.

SUBMITTER: Nugraha ED

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8285509 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Comprehensive exposure assessments from the viewpoint of health in a unique high natural background radiation area, Mamuju, Indonesia.

Nugraha Eka Djatnika ED Hosoda Masahiro M Kusdiana Untara Mellawati June J Nurokhim Tamakuma Yuki Y Ikram Abarrul A Syaifudin Mukh M Yamada Ryohei R Akata Naofumi N Sasaki Michiya M Furukawa Masahide M Yoshinaga Shinji S Yamaguchi Masaru M Miura Tomisato T Kashiwakura Ikuo I Tokonami Shinji S

Scientific reports 20210716 1

Mamuju is one of the regions in Indonesia which retains natural conditions but has relatively high exposure to natural radiation. The goals of the present study were to characterize exposure of the entire Mamuju region as a high natural background radiation area (HNBRA) and to assess the existing exposure as a means for radiation protection of the public and the environment. A cross-sectional study method was used with cluster sampling areas by measuring all parameters that contribute to externa ...[more]

PMID: 34272409

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Project description:Decomposition of litter and organic matter is a very important soil ecosystem function where soil fauna play an important role. Knowledge of the responses in decomposition and soil fauna to different stressors is therefore crucial. However, the extent to which radioactivity may affect soil fauna is not so well known. There are some results showing effects on soil fauna at uranium mines and near Chernobyl from relatively high levels of anthropogenic radionuclides. We hypothesize that naturally occurring radionuclides affect soil fauna and thus litter decomposition, which will covary with radionuclide levels when accounting for important soil parameters. We have therefore used standardised litterbags with two different mesh sizes filled with birch leaves (Betula pubescens) to assess litter decomposition in an area with enhanced levels of naturally occurring radionuclides in the thorium (232Th) and uranium (238U) decay chains while controlling for variation in important soil parameters like pH, organic matter content, moisture and large grain size. We show that decomposition rate is higher in litterbags with large mesh size compared to litterbags with a fine mesh size that excludes soil fauna. We also find that litter dried at room temperature is decomposed at a faster rate than litter dried in oven (60⁰C). This was surprising given the associated denaturation of proteins and anticipated increased nutritional level but may be explained by the increased stiffness of oven-dried litter. This result is important since different studies often use either oven-dried or room temperature-dried litter. Taking the above into account, we explore statistical models to show large and expected effects of soil parameters but also significant effects on litter decomposition of the naturally occurring radionuclide levels. We use the ERICA tool to estimate total dose rate per coarse litterbag for four different model organisms, and in subsequent different statistical models we identify that the model including the dose rates of a small tube-shape is the best statistical model. In another statistical model including soil parameters and radionuclide distributions, 226Ra (or uranium precursory radionuclides) explain variation in litter decomposition while 228Ra (and precursors) do not. This may hint to chemical toxicity effects of uranium. However, when combining this model with the best model, the resulting simplified model is equal to the tube-shape dose-rate model. There is thus a need for more research on how naturally occurring radionuclides affect soil fauna, but the study at hand show the importance of an ecosystem approach and the ecosystem parameter soil decomposition.

Project description:In the real world, human speech recognition nearly always involves listening in background noise. The impact of such noise on speech signals and on intelligibility performance increases with the separation of the listener from the speaker. The present behavioral experiment provides an overview of the effects of such acoustic disturbances on speech perception in conditions approaching ecologically valid contexts. We analysed the intelligibility loss in spoken word lists with increasing listener-to-speaker distance in a typical low-level natural background noise. The noise was combined with the simple spherical amplitude attenuation due to distance, basically changing the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Therefore, our study draws attention to some of the most basic environmental constraints that have pervaded spoken communication throughout human history. We evaluated the ability of native French participants to recognize French monosyllabic words (spoken at 65.3 dB(A), reference at 1 meter) at distances between 11 to 33 meters, which corresponded to the SNRs most revealing of the progressive effect of the selected natural noise (-8.8 dB to -18.4 dB). Our results showed that in such conditions, identity of vowels is mostly preserved, with the striking peculiarity of the absence of confusion in vowels. The results also confirmed the functional role of consonants during lexical identification. The extensive analysis of recognition scores, confusion patterns and associated acoustic cues revealed that sonorant, sibilant and burst properties were the most important parameters influencing phoneme recognition. . Altogether these analyses allowed us to extract a resistance scale from consonant recognition scores. We also identified specific perceptual consonant confusion groups depending of the place in the words (onset vs. coda). Finally our data suggested that listeners may access some acoustic cues of the CV transition, opening interesting perspectives for future studies.

Dataset Information

Comprehensive exposure assessments from the viewpoint of health in a unique high natural background radiation area, Mamuju, Indonesia.

Publications

Comprehensive exposure assessments from the viewpoint of health in a unique high natural background radiation area, Mamuju, Indonesia.

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