Radon measurements
- Fig.1 Healing cave in Bad Gastein, Austria, where our Radon exposuremeter was used.
- Fig.2 Entrance to the KV34 tomb in the Valey of Kings, Egypt, where Radon concentration of more than 10 kB/m3 were measured with our prototypes.
Measurement of Radon with the new active radon exposure meter
Major efforts of the working group are made to develop an active exposure meter for radon gas (see Detector Development on this website). Prototypes of this device have been and are still being used to measure radon in the environment, at various concentrations, in order to test and demonstrate the applicability of the instrument to quantify individual occupational and public radon exposures.
a) Prototypes of the instrument were used to measure individual concentrations of members of the institute, and typical values of several tens to several hundred Bq/m3 were found. These measurements are compared to indoor radon concentrations measured at home and in the office, with these prototypes. The results are currently being evaluated (Karinda et al. 2010a).
b) Prototypes were also tested at high concentrations, and individual exposures of patients treated in the Bad Gastein healing cave (http://www.gasteiner-heilstollen.com/), as well as those of employees were measured (Fig. 1). Concentrations of up to 160 kBq/m3 were measured, and it was demonstrated that exposure of employees were significantly lower than those of patients, during their stay in the cave (Karinda et al. 2010b).
c) In order to test the prototypes under realistic conditions, they were distributed to safe guards working in tombs of the Valley of the Kings, Egypt (Fig. 2). There environmental temperatures and humidity were high (up to 35 oC and 65%, respectively), and the safe guards who wore the prototypes had no technical background. Interestingly, effective doses of up to about 60 mSv were deduced for some of the safe guards, due to radon inhalation (Gruber et al. 2010).
References:
F. L. Karinda, E. Gruber, E. Salama, W. Rühm, H.G. Paretzke. Realtime assessment of radon gas exposures of individuals and implications for epidemiological risk estimates. In preparation, 2010a.
F. L. Karinda, C. Köstinger, W. Rühm. Realtime assessment of individual radon exposures in the Gasteiner Heilstollen, Austria. In preparation, 2010b.
E. Gruber, E. Salama, W. Rühm. Real-time measurement of individual occupational radon exposures in tombs of the valley of the kings, Egypt. Submitted, 2010.