High annual radon concentration in dwellings and natural radioactivity content in nearby soil in some rural areas of Kosovo and Metohija

Gulan, Ljiljana and Bochicchio, Francesco and Carpentieri, Carmela and Milic, Gordana and Stajic, Jelena and Krstic, Dragana and Stojanovska, Zdenka and Nikezic, Dragoslav and Zunic, Zora S. (2013) High annual radon concentration in dwellings and natural radioactivity content in nearby soil in some rural areas of Kosovo and Metohija. Nuclear Technology & Radiation Protection, 28 (1). pp. 60-67. ISSN 1452-8185

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Abstract

Some pre vious studies on radon concentration in dwellings of some ar eas of Kosovo and Metohija have revealed a high average radon concentration, even though the detectors were
exposed for three months only. In or der to better de sign a larger study in this region, the annual mea sure ments in 25 houses were car ried out as a pi lot study. For each house,CR-39-based passive devices were exposed in two rooms for the two consecutive six-month
periods to account for seasonal variations of radon concentration. Furthermore, in order to
correlate the in door ra don with radium in nearby soil and to improve the knowledge of the
natural radioactivity in the region, soil samples near each house were collected and 226Ra,
232Th, 40K activity concentration were measured. The indoor radon concentration resulted
quite high from the average (163 Bq/m3) and generally it did not differ considerably between
the two rooms and the two six-month periods. The natural radionuclides in soil resulted to be
distributed quite uniformly. Moreover, the correlation between the 226Ra content in soil and
radon concentration in dwellings resulted to be low (R2 = 0.26). The an nual effective dose
from radon and its short-lived progeny (5.5 mSv, in average) was calcu lated by us ing the last
ICRP dose conversion factors. In comparison, the con tribution to the annual effec tive dose
of out door gamma exposure from natu ral radionuclides in soil is nearly negligible (66 mSv).
In conclusion, the observed high radon levels are only partially correlated with radium in soil;
moreover, a good estimate of the annual average of radon concentration can be obtained from
a six-month measurement with a proper choice of exposure period, which could be useful when designing large surveys.

Item Type: Article
Subjects: Natural sciences > Physical sciences
Divisions: Faculty of Medical Science
Depositing User: Zdenka Stojanovska
Date Deposited: 08 May 2013 09:50
Last Modified: 30 Oct 2014 10:27
URI: https://eprints.ugd.edu.mk/id/eprint/6235

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