Lung cancer has high mortality and incidence rates. The leading causes of lung cancer are smoking and radon exposure. Indeed, the World Health Organization (WHO) has categorized radon as a carcinogenic substance causing lung cancer. Radon is a natural, radioactive substance; it is an inert gas that mainly exists in soil or rock. The gas decays into radioactive particles called radon progeny tha...

A multi-cell computer model of a family house with cellar was developed with the ventilation and contaminant movement computer prediction program BREEZE. The model was used to simulate the movement of radon gas from the cellar to the living areas of the house. Field measurements were also carried out under various controlled ventilation strategies. The paper outlines the development of the comp...

Among the various "natural laboratories" of high natural or technical enhanced natural radiation environments in the world such as Kerala (India), Brazil, Ramsar (Iran), etc., the areas in and around the Central European Ore Mountains (Erzgebirge) in the southern parts of former East Germany, but also including parts of Thuringia, northern Bohemia (now Czech Republic), and northeastern Bavaria,...

For several years, the Radioactivity Environmental Monitoring group of the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission has been working on a European Atlas of Natural Radiation. This Atlas is intended to familiarise the public with the radioactive environment, to give a more balanced view of the annual dose that it may receive from natural radioactivity and to provide reference mater...

The risk from environmental radon levels is not higher now than in the past, when residential exposures were not considered to be a significant health hazard. The majority of the radon dose is not from radon itself, but from short-lived alpha-emitting radon daughters, most notably 218Po(T1/2 3 min) and 214Po (T1/2 0.164 msec) along with beta particles from 214Bi (T1/2 19.7 min). Radon gas can p...

Indoor radon concentrations were measured in 77 schools of the prefecture of Xanthi in northern Greece. The arithmetic mean radon concentration is 231 Bq m(-3) with a range between 45 and 958 Bq m(-3). Thirty five schools have mean radon concentration above 200 Bq m(-3) and nine schools have mean radon concentration above 400 Bq m(-3). From continuous radon gas measurements in the school with a...

The fraction of radon atoms generated from radium decay that are released from into a rock or soil pore space is defined as the radon emanation coefficient, or emanating power, of the material. The emanation coefficient of rocks and soils typically varies between about 0.05 and 0.70, and an average value for soils is probably between 0.20 and 0.30. Geologic, pedologic, and climatic factors, inc...

The economic implications of regulations governing radon gas level identification and remediation in buildings are poorly understood, and attempts to address these issues have been criticised for lack of comparability. It is imperative therefore that a general model for the economic evaluation of radon remediation programmes is adopted to ensure comparability between studies and settings and to...

This paper summarises the epidemiological literature on domestic exposure to radon and risk for childhood leukaemia. The results of 12 ecological studies show a consistent pattern of higher incidence and mortality rates for childhood leukaemia in areas with higher average indoor radon concentrations. Although the results of such studies are useful to generate hypotheses, they must be interprete...