Natural radionuclides in Brazilian mineral water and consequent doses to the population.

Based on production data published by the Brazilian Mineral Water Producers Association, bottled mineral waters were bought at the market, covering, at least, 50% of the annual production of each Brazilian geographical region. 228Ra, 226Ra and 210Pb were analyzed and the weighted mean values obtained for Brazilian mineral waters were 0.097, 0.027 and 0.066 Bq l-1 respectively. Individual effective dose rate estimates due to ingestion of mineral water in Brazil were of the order of 10-100 microSv yr-1, depending on the geographical region. Based on the available data, it was also possible to evaluate the per caput effective dose rate and the highest value obtained was 4.3 microSv yr-1 for the northern region.