QUANTITATIVE MEASUREMENT OF NATURAL RADIOACTIVITY IN VEGETABLE AND MEAT BEFORE AND AFTER COOKING

The effect of cooking in natural radioactivity was studied in different items used as human diet. The samples of meat and vegetables used in the Faisalabad City were collected from various places and markets. The detection was made after different processing conditions including washed, peel off, fried (hot) and fried (cold) for chicken, beef and mutton by using Geiger Muller Radalert 100 detector available in the Nuclear Institute of Agriculture Biology NIAB, Faisalabad. The activity concentration decreases from fried (hot) to fried cold for both meat and vegetables. From the above study it was clear that only washing can reduce the level of activity. Relatively high level of natural radioactivity was observed in the chicken (43.33+- 0.87 Bq/kg) developed under controlled diet than the desi chicken showing the activity concentration (40.27+- 0.27 Bq/kg) for fried cold condition. Among white meat, fish (39.24+- 0.27 Bq/kg) having least activity concentration in fried cold condition. From the data it is observed that fish can be used as a human diet to control the activity level. More over activity level can be controlled by taking diet that is not to hot.