Prediction of Indoor Radon Risk from Radium Concentration in Soil: Republic of Macedonia Case Study

Abstract

Geo-referenced datasets of indoor radon concentrations and radium concentrations in soil are available for the Republic of Macedonia. However, the indoor Rn-222 data are spatially strongly clustered as the measurements were essentially confined to major towns and cities. Hence, the estimation of the geographical distribution of Rn-222 concentration based only on the Rn-222 data is difficult to be made. On the other hand, geochemical measurements Ra-226 are quite well distributed over the country. Since Ra-226 is the source of Rn-222, one may think of using Ra-226 as a predictor for Rn-222. In this paper we present a method for modelling the stochastic dependency of indoor Rn-222 of soil Ra-226. The method is new in the area on Rn-222 assessment and still needs to be validated by more case studies. It must be born in mind that the indoor Rn-222 depends, in some cases more strongly, on controlling factors other than the Ra-226 in soil, so that its estimation from Ra-226 alone is inevitably imperfect. The results must therefore be understood as estimates in absence of other information, and as a motivation to carry out measurements in regions where the model predicts higher Rn-222 levels, but for which no measurements are available so far.1st East European Radon Symposium (FERAS), Sep 02-05, 2012, Cluj Napoca, Romani