From the European indoor radon map towards an atlas of natural radiation

Abstract

In 2006, the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission launched a project to map radon at the European level, as part of a planned European Atlas of Natural Radiation. It started with a map of indoor radon concentrations. As of May 2014, this map includes data from 24 countries, covering a fair part of Europe. Next, a European map of geogenic radon, intended to show ‘what earth delivers’ in terms of radon potential (RP), was started in 2008. A first trial map has been created, and a database was established to collect all available data relevant to the RP. The Atlas should eventually display the geographical distribution of physical quantities related to natural radiation. In addition to radon, it will comprise maps of quantities such as cosmic rays and terrestrial gamma radiation. In this paper, the authors present the current state of the radon maps and the Atlas.

Radon.pdf

“…Though radon testing and remediation can be challenging (e.g. [16]), there are evidences showing positive reinforcement effects of communication campaigns on radon awareness and testing [17]. For example,…”

Untitled

“…It is interesting to mention that according to Tollefsen et al, (2014), data from the indoor radon concentrations map in Europe are related to the "granitic areas of the Bohemian Massif, the Iberian Peninsula, the Massif Central, the Fennoscandian shield, Corsica, Cornwall and the Vosges Mountains, the crystalline rocks of the Central Alps, karst rocks of the Swiss Jura and the Dinarides, the black shales in North Estonia and in certain volcanic structures in central Italy." (Tollefsen et al, 2014).…”

“…The Euratom Treaty requires the European Commission to "collect, validate and provide information about the levels of radioactivity in the environment" (De Cort et al, 2011). Several authors mention different needs regarding the monitoring of the environmental radioactivity levels present on the European legal, regulatory and scienti c levels that led to the initiatives such as the development of the European Atlas of Natural Radiation (EANR) ( , 2005;Gruber et al;Tollefsen et al, 2014;Cinelli and Tollefsen, 2016). The EANR project was started by the Radioactivity Environmental Monitoring (ERM) group at the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC), with the main objectives of introducing the concept of natural radioactivity to the general public, identifying the areas where natural radioactivity levels are elevated and providing reference materials and data to the scienti c community (Gruber et al, 2013;Dubois et al, 2010).…”

European annual cosmic-ray dose: estimation of population exposure

“…It has been developed by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission. The map is part of the European Atlas of Natural Radiation (EANR), which will be a collection of maps displaying the levels of natural radioactivity caused by different sources (indoor and outdoor radon, cosmic radiation, terrestrial gamma radiation and radionuclides in soil and water) (Tollefsen, Cinelli, Bossew, Gruber, & De Cort, 2014). The overall goal of the Atlas is to estimate the annual dose that the public may receive from natural radioactivity, combining all the information from different maps.…”