Radiological Assessment of Indoor Radon and Thoron Concentrations and Indoor Radon Map of Dwellings in Mashhad, Iran

Mohammademad Adelikhah, Amin Shahrokhi, Morteza Imani, Stanislaw Chalupnik and Tibor Kovács
Additional contact information
Mohammademad Adelikhah: Institute of Radiochemistry and Radioecology, University of Pannonia, 8200 Veszprém, Hungary
Amin Shahrokhi: Institute of Radiochemistry and Radioecology, University of Pannonia, 8200 Veszprém, Hungary
Morteza Imani: Materials and Nuclear Fuel Research School, Nuclear Science and Technology Research Institute, Tehran 11365-8486, Iran
Stanislaw Chalupnik: Silesian Centre for Environmental Radioactivity, Central Mining Institute, plac Gwarków 1, 40-166 Katowice, Poland
Tibor Kovács: Institute of Radiochemistry and Radioecology, University of Pannonia, 8200 Veszprém, Hungary

IJERPH, 2020, vol. 18, issue 1, 1-15

Abstract: A comprehensive study was carried out to measure indoor radon/thoron concentrations in 78 dwellings and soil-gas radon in the city of Mashhad, Iran during two seasons, using two common radon monitoring devices (NRPB and RADUET). In the winter, indoor radon concentrations measured between 75 ± 11 to 376 ± 24 Bq·m −3 (mean: 150 ± 19 Bq m −3 ), whereas indoor thoron concentrations ranged from below the Lower Limit of Detection (LLD) to 166 ± 10 Bq·m −3 (mean: 66 ± 8 Bq m −3 ), while radon and thoron concentrations in summer fell between 50 ± 11 and 305 ± 24 Bq·m −3 (mean 115 ± 18 Bq m −3 ) and from below the LLD to 122 ± 10 Bq m −3 (mean 48 ± 6 Bq·m −3 ), respectively. The annual average effective dose was estimated to be 3.7 ± 0.5 mSv yr −1 . The soil-gas radon concentrations fell within the range from 1.07 ± 0.28 to 8.02 ± 0.65 kBq·m −3 (mean 3.07 ± 1.09 kBq·m −3 ). Finally, indoor radon maps were generated by ArcGIS software over a grid of 1 × 1 km 2 using three different interpolation techniques. In grid cells where no data was observed, the arithmetic mean was used to predict a mean indoor radon concentration. Accordingly, inverse distance weighting (IDW) was proven to be more suitable for predicting mean indoor radon concentrations due to the lower mean absolute error (MAE) and root mean square error (RMSE). Meanwhile, the radiation health risk due to the residential exposure to radon and indoor gamma radiation exposure was also assessed.

Keywords: residential exposure; dose; gamma radiation; health risk; radon mapping; CR-39 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/1/141/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/1/141/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:18:y:2020:i:1:p:141-:d:469119

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().