Radon Progeny Adsorption on Facial Masks

Annika Hinrichs (), Claudia Fournier, Gerhard Kraft and Andreas Maier ()
Additional contact information
Annika Hinrichs: GSI Helmholtzzentrum Für Schwerionenforschung GmbH, Planckstr. 1, 64291 Darmstadt, Germany
Claudia Fournier: GSI Helmholtzzentrum Für Schwerionenforschung GmbH, Planckstr. 1, 64291 Darmstadt, Germany
Gerhard Kraft: GSI Helmholtzzentrum Für Schwerionenforschung GmbH, Planckstr. 1, 64291 Darmstadt, Germany
Andreas Maier: GSI Helmholtzzentrum Für Schwerionenforschung GmbH, Planckstr. 1, 64291 Darmstadt, Germany

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 18, 1-10

Abstract: The radioactive noble gas radon and its short-living progeny are inhaled during respiration, depositing their decay energies in the lungs. These progeny are considered responsible for more than 95% of the total effective dose and are, together with radon, classified as carcinogenic for lung cancer. Consequently, filtration of the progeny could reduce the dose to the lungs. In our study, we investigated the filtration properties of FFP2 versus surgical masks (II R) for radon and its decay products. The masks were attached to a measurement device, which enabled determination of the size distribution of radon progeny, ranging from unattached to clustered progeny. In parallel, it measured the radon activity concentration during experiments. By comparing background measurements without mask and experiments with masks, the percentage of retained unattached radon progeny was determined for FFP2 (98.8 ± 0.6%) and II R masks (98.4 ± 0.7%). For clustered progeny, the retained fraction was 85.2 ± 18.1% for FFP2 and 79.5 ± 22.1% for II R masks while radon was not filtered. We can show that masks are effective in filtering radon progeny and thus are capable of reducing the total effective dose to the lungs.

Keywords: radon progeny; FFP2 masks; filtration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/18/11337/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/18/11337/ (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:19:y:2022:i:18:p:11337-:d:910691

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 ().