Distribution of natural radionuclides and radiation level measurements in Karnataka State, India: an overview

Assessment of 232Th, 226Ra, 137Cs, and 40 K concentrations and annual effective dose due to the consumption of Vietnamese fresh milk

Vietnam has little data on radionuclide concentrations in milk, despite steadily increasing domestic consumption. Eight milk brands were investigated by gamma-spectrometry, and the resulting ingestion dose was calculated. The 232Th, 226Ra, 137Cs, and 40K concentrations varied from 0.60 ± 0.19 to 1.21 ± 0.24, 1.45 ± 0.18 to 2.45 ± 0.24, below detection limit to 0.13 ± 0.06, and 341 ± 6 to 387 ± 7 Bq/kg (dry w.t). The total average Annual Effective Dose for all age groups were similar for all brands, and concentrations are far less than the WHO guidance level. All brands are safe for consumption.

Microbial synthesis of hollow porous Prussian blue@yeast microspheres and their synergistic enhancement of organic pollutant removal performance

In this work, Prussian blue nanoparticles (PB NPs) were in situ grown on S. cerevisiae cells via one-step hydrothermal synthesis and the as-prepared Prussian blue@yeast (PB@yeast) hybrids exhibited synergistic adsorption and Fenton catalytic activities. FE-SEM, XRD and BET analysis of the prepared samples confirmed the successful formation of hollow porous structured PB@yeast microspheres, while FT-IR and XPS spectra indicated the fine structures were occupied by both functional adsorptive and catalytic sites. The experimental results of adsorption coupled Fenton reaction of PB@yeast hybrid microspheres revealed that the functional groups on the cell wall and the active iron sites in PB framework were fully utilized due to the triple synergistic effects of adsorption-Fenton catalysis-adsorption sites regeneration, thus endowing synergistically enhanced performance in removal of the selected cationic methylene blue (MB), anionic Methyl Orange (MO) and fluorescent brightener 71 (CXT) in aqueous solution. The high Fenton catalytic efficiency was related to the improvement of adsorption, in which the enrichment of contaminant molecules on the outer and inner surface of the hollow porous microspheres could lower mass transfer resistance and shorten charge transport pathways, thereby introducing more efficient Fenton catalytic activity than PB NPs.