The potential of decorative building materials (marble) for retrospective thermoluminescence dosimetry

Among the various types of decorative materials used in Bangladeshi dwellings, the marble/marble stone is one of the most common ones that used largely for enhancing the beauty and/or aristocracy of the dwelling environment. In this study, the most commonly used, six types of marble stones, have been analyzed for retrospective accident dosimetry. With the interest of characterizing several key thermoluminescence properties to examine their potentiality for dosimetry, annealing - irradiation - readout steps have been done chronologically which comprises the analysis of glow curves, relative sensitivity, dose dependence, repeatability and fading. Considering the various TL parameters, marble 'Carrara' imported from Italy present relatively better capability for reconstruction of radiation dose in the dose range of 10-50 Gy. From fading result, it is clear that for reconstruction of absorbed dose up to four weeks of post exposure, the marble 'Carrara' is found to be the most reliable media among the studied marble types. The Z(eff) values for the various marble samples are found to be in the range of 13.65-19.12, comparing favorably in replace of TLD-200 (Z(eff) = 16.3) which can be used for low-level environmental radiation dosimetry. Present work constitutes the first study to investigate the potentials of marble stone for reconstruction of absorbed dose in the range of 10-50 Gy dose.

Automated summary

In this study, six types of commonly used marble stones were analyzed for their thermoluminescence properties and it was found that the imported marble 'Carrara' from Italy has relatively better capability for radiation dose reconstruction in the range of 10-50 Gy, remaining reliable for up to four weeks post exposure. The Z(eff) values of the various marble samples also compare favorably with TLD-200 for low-level environmental radiation dosimetry.