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

摘要

Geo-referenced datasets of indoor radon concentrations and radium concentrations in soil are available for the Republic of Macedonia. However, the indoor 222 Rn data are spatially strongly clustered as the measurements were essentially confined to major towns and cities. Hence, the estimation of the geographical distribution of 222 Rn concentration based only on the 222 Rn data is difficult to be made. On the other hand, geochemical measurements 226 Ra are quite well distributed over the country. Since 226 Ra is the source of 222 Rn, one may think of using 226 Ra as a predictor for 222 Rn. In this paper we present a method for modelling the stochastic dependency of indoor 222 Rn of soil 226 Ra. The method is new in the area on 222 Rn assessment and still needs to be validated by more case studies. It must be born in mind that the indoor 222 Rn depends, in some cases more strongly, on controlling factors other than the 226 Ra in soil, so that its estimation from 226 Ra 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 222 Rn levels, but for which no measurements are available so far.