Radon problem has a special attention in many countries in the world and the most of them have established national radon programmes. The radon issues in Serbia have not been approached in a systematic and organized way. Currently, there are many research groups and institutions working in radon field, and it is a good basis to integrate all these activities into a comprehensive national programme to define the strategic objectives and action plan for the next few years. Also, Serbia as a candidate for membership in the EU is obliged to harmonize its legislation, including the field of radiation protection in which the radon issues has an important role. In this report, a brief history of radon research, present status and plans for the future activity on radon issues in Serbia are presented. Regarding the long-term plans, the establishment and implementation of the Radon Action Plan with the primary goal of raising awareness about the harmful effects of public exposure to radon and implementing a set of measures for its reduction. In that sense, the synergy between the national, regional and local organizations responsible for public health and radiation protection must be achieved.
The first step in every systematic approach to investigating population exposure to radon on a national level is to perform a comprehensive indoor radon survey. Based on general knowledge of the radon levels in Serbia and corresponding doses, the results obtained from a national indoor radon survey would allow policymakers to decide whether it is necessary to establish a national radon programme. For this reason, Serbia initiated work on a national radon action plan (RAP) in 2014 when it was decided to carry out the first national indoor radon survey. The responsibility for establishing the RAP in Serbia is that of the national regulatory body in the field of radiation protection—the Serbian Radiation and Nuclear Safety and Security Directorate (SRBATOM), formerly known as the Serbian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency. The first national indoor radon survey was supported by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) through a Technical Cooperation Programme. Thanks to the IAEA, we received 6000 passive radon devices based on track-etched detectors. In addition, in order to ensure technical support for the project, SRBATOM formed a task force made up of expert radon representatives from national research institutions. This paper presents a thorough description of the sampling design of the first Serbian indoor radon survey. It also presents the results of the national indoor radon survey, including descriptive statistics and testing of the distribution of the obtained results for log-normality. Based on GPS coordinates, indoor radon data were projected onto a map of 10 km × 10 km grid cells. Two values were calculated for each cell to create two distinct maps. One map shows the arithmetic mean value of indoor radon concentration per grid cell, and the other map shows the number of radon detectors per grid cell used for the calculation of mean values.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.