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Review
. 2022 Jan 7;19(2):662.
doi: 10.3390/ijerph19020662.

Outdoor Radon as a Tool to Estimate Radon Priority Areas-A Literature Overview

Igor Čeliković  1 , Gordana Pantelić  1 , Ivana Vukanac  1 , Jelena Krneta Nikolić  1 , Miloš Živanović  1 , Giorgia Cinelli  2   3 , Valeria Gruber  4 , Sebastian Baumann  4 , Luis Santiago Quindos Poncela  5 , Daniel Rabago  5
Affiliations
Review

Outdoor Radon as a Tool to Estimate Radon Priority Areas-A Literature Overview

Igor Čeliković et al. Int J Environ Res Public Health. .

Abstract

Doses from the exposure to outdoor radon are typically an order of magnitude smaller than those from indoor radon, causing a greater interest on investigation of the latter for radiation protection issues. As a consequence, assessment of radon priority areas (RPA) is mainly based on indoor radon measurements. Outdoor radon measurements might be needed to guarantee a complete estimation of radiological risk and may help to improve the estimation of RPA. Therefore, authors have analysed the available literature on outdoor radon to give an overview of outdoor radon surveys and potential correlation with indoor radon and estimation of RPA. The review has shown that outdoor radon surveys were performed at much smaller scale compared to indoor radon. Only a few outdoor radon maps were produced, with a much smaller density, covering a larger area, and therefore putting doubt on the representativeness of this data. Due to a large variety of techniques used for outdoor radon measurements and requirement to have detectors with a high sensitivity and resistance to harsh environmental conditions, a standardised measurement protocol should be derived. This is no simple endeavour since there are more applications in different scientific disciplines for outdoor radon measurements compared to indoor radon.

Keywords: indoor radon concentrations; literature overview; outdoor radon concentrations; radiation risk; radon priority areas.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Uncorrected (left figure) and corrected (right figure) cumulative distribution of log of indoor radon concentration. Figure is taken from [55,56].
Figure 2
Figure 2
Diurnal variation of outdoor radon concentration from midnight 16 midnight 21 of August 2000 [66]. Sampling time was 1 h.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Monthly and year toyear variation of outdoor radon in Milan in period from 1997 to 2000. Figure is taken from Sesana et al. [66].
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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