Human health risk screening of radioactive and nonradioactive contaminants due to uranium industry operation

This paper presents a human health risk screening of radioactive and non-radioactive contaminants in the off-site surface water environment downstream of an uranium mining and milling facilities. Two hypothetical critical groups were considered. Exposure pathways includes the use of river water for ingestion, swimming, irrigation of crops and cattle watering. The screening analysis pointed out that the non-radioactive contaminants —manganese, fluoride and uranium (due to its chemical toxicity)—are of more concern than the radioactive ones. Water and vegetables ingestion were assessed as the most important exposure pathways. These results indicated that despite the fact that in these kind of facilities most of the attention were focused on radiation risks, non radioactive contaminants may be of greater concern