Radon concentrations in European residences

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Question

What are the radon concentrations in European residences, now and in the future?

Answer

Rationale

Initial data is compiled from National Summary Reports, EnVIE project ^[1] and UNSCEAR 2000 ^[2].

Future concentrations are constructed from current concentration data and predicted residence air exchange rates, by using Failed to parse (SVG (MathML can be enabled via browser plugin): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle c_n = \frac{a_0+k}{a_n+k}c_0} where c is concentration, a is air exchange rate and k is decay rate (radioactive decay of Rn222). This formula is derived from heande:Category:Lama model for indoor sources, where it has been assumed that the rate of emission of radon from soil is constant.

Original Data

**Radon concentrations in dwellings determined in indoor surveys.**
Compiled from National Summary Reports, EnVIE project ^[1] and UNSCEAR 2000 ^[2].
Country	Number of dwellings sampled	Period and approx duration of measurement (situation in end 2008)	Arithmetic mean (Bq/m³)	Population 'dose' (M#*Bq/m³)	Geometric mean (Bq/m³)	Geometric SD (Bq/m³)	Per cent >200 Bq/m³	Per cent >400 Bq/m³	Max obs (Bq/m³)
Albania			120	408	105	2			270
Austria	16000	1991-2002	97	795	61		12	4	8325
Belgium	10447	1995-present	69	718	76	2	2.4	0.5	4500
Bulgaria			30	255	22				250
Croatia	782	2003-05	68	306			7.2	1.8	751
Cyprus			7	6	7	2.6			78
CzechRep	150000	1984-present	140	1428	110		15	2.5	25000
Denmark	3120	1995-96	53	292	64	2.2	2.9	0.2	590
Estonia			120	180	92				1390
Finland	3074	1990-91	120	624	84	2.1	12.3	3.6	33000
France	12261	1980-2003	89	5536	53	2.7	8.5	2	4964
Germany	50000	1978-2003	50	4120	40	1.9	3	1	10000
Greece	1277	1994-98	55	594	44		3.1	1.1	1700
Hungary			107	1081	82	2.7			1990
Ireland	11319	1992-99	89	374	57		7.5	1.5	1924
Italy	5361	1989-1998	70	4060	52	2	4.1	0.9	1036
Latvia
Lithuania			55	204	22				1860
Luxembourg	2619	1993-2002	115	58	70	2		3	2776
Malta
Netherlands	952	1995-96	30	498	25	1.6	0.3	0	382
Norway	37400	1990-99	89	409	40		9	3	50000
Poland	2886	1992-94	49	1887	32	2	2	0.4	3261
Portugal	3317	1988-91	86	920	39	2.2			3558
Romania			45	1022					1025
Slovakia			87	470					3750
Slovenia	892	1993-95	87	174	60	2.2	7.7	2	1890
Spain	5600	1990-2005	90	3645	45	3.7	6	2	15400
Sweden	1360	1991-92	108	972	56		11	3.5	3904
Switzerland	55000	1980-2005	77	585	50		17	7	29705
UK	450000	1980-2005	20	1220			0.5	0.1	17000
Eur weighed average Bq/m³			64.6

Notes.

Changes since EnVIE ^[1]: Bulgaria arithmetic mean added. Data existing in UNSCEAR but not in EnVIE; data was added here: Geometric mean for Luxembourg, Norway, Poland, Slovenia (also GSD), Switzerland.
The UNSCEAR data table is on a previous version of this page.
Original Excel file: N:\ILMA\_Projects\ENVIE\WP-2

Dependencies

heande:HI:Air exchange rate for European residences

Unit

Bq/m³

Formula

Initial concentration data is downloaded from an earlier run, for which the details can be found in the earlier page version under "Formula".

This code features R functions described on pages Opasnet Base Connection for R and Operating intelligently with multidimensional arrays in R.

+ Show code - Hide code

library(OpasnetBaseUtils)
c0 <- op_baseGetData("opasnet_base", "Op_en4713", series_id = 897)
ae <- op_baseGetData("opasnet_base", "Erac2499")
ae0 <- ae[ae[,"Year"]=="2010",]
ae0array <- DataframeToArray(ae0[,c("obs","Country","Result")])
aen <- ae[ae[,"Year"]!="2010",]
c0array <- DataframeToArray(c0[,c(2,3,4)])
aenxc0 <- IntArray(aen, c0array, "c0")
aenxc0xa0 <- IntArray(aenxc0, ae0array, "a0")
k <- 0.007525128
x <- data.frame(aenxc0xa0[,c("obs","Country","policy","Year")], ((aenxc0xa0[,"a0"] + k)/(aenxc0xa0[,"Result"] + k)) * aenxc0xa0[,"c0"])
ae0xc0 <- IntArray(ae0, c0, "c0")
final <- ae0xc0[,c("obs","Country","policy","Year","c0")]
colnames(final)[ncol(final)] <- "Result"
o <- nrow(final)
final[(o+1):(o+nrow(x)),] <- x[,]

References

↑ ^1.0 ^1.1 ^1.2 EnVIE: Indoor Air Pollution Exposure. EnVIE project (Co-ordination Action on Indoor Air Quality and Health Effects; Project no. SSPE-CT-2004-502671) Deliverable 2.1 (WP2 Technical Report). KTL, Kuopio, 2008. (on project website) (on Heande website)
↑ ^2.0 ^2.1 UNSCEAR 2000 Report Vol. 1 Sources and effects of ionizing radiation. United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation , 2000.

Darby S, Hill D, Auvinen A, Barros-Dios JM, Baysson H, Bochicchio F, Deo H, Falk R, Forastiere F, Hakama M, Heid I, Kreienbrock L, Kreutzer M, Lagarde F, Mäkeläinen I, Muirhead C, Obereigner W, Pershagen G, Ruano-Ravina A, Ruosteenoja E, Schaffrath-Rosario A, Tirmarche M, Tomasek L, Whitley E, Wichmann H-E, Doll R. Radon in homes and lung cancer risk: collaborative analysis of individual data from 13 European case-control studies. British Medical Journal 2005; 330: 223–226.

G. Dubois. An overview of radon surveys in Europe. Luxembourg:Office for Official Publication of the European Communities. ISBN 92-79-01066-2. European communities, 2005

Related files

[enviewp2-1] 1.0 ^1.1 ^1.2 EnVIE: Indoor Air Pollution Exposure. EnVIE project (Co-ordination Action on Indoor Air Quality and Health Effects; Project no. SSPE-CT-2004-502671) Deliverable 2.1 (WP2 Technical Report). KTL, Kuopio, 2008. (on project website) (on Heande website)

[unscear-2] 2.0 ^2.1 UNSCEAR 2000 Report Vol. 1 Sources and effects of ionizing radiation. United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation , 2000.

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