The European Atlas of Natural Radiation, recently published, contains a collection of maps of Europe showing the levels of natural sources of radiation. Among the lacunae of the Atlas are maps of U, Th and K concentrations in rocks due to lack of European-wide geochemical surveys of bedrock units. The objective of this paper is to investigate the usability of scattered geochemical data of rock samples for large-scale mapping of U, Th and K concentrations in geological units.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInt J Environ Res Public Health
June 2020
Exposure to indoor radon at home and in workplaces constitutes a serious public health risk and is the second most prevalent cause of lung cancer after tobacco smoking. Indoor radon concentration is to a large extent controlled by so-called geogenic radon, which is radon generated in the ground. While indoor radon has been mapped in many parts of Europe, this is not the case for its geogenic control, which has been surveyed exhaustively in only a few countries or regions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe European Atlas of Natural Radiation is a collection of maps displaying the levels of natural radioactivity caused by different sources. It has been developed and is being maintained by the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission, in line with its mission, based on the Euratom Treaty: to collect, validate and report information on radioactivity levels in the environment of the EU Member States. This work describes the first version of the European Atlas of Natural Radiation, available in digital format through a web portal, as well as the methodology and results for the maps already developed.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA map of uranium concentration in soil has been planned for the European Atlas of Natural Radiation. This Atlas is being developed by the Radioactivity Environmental Monitoring (REM) group of the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission. The great interest in uranium compared to other terrestrial radionuclides stems from the fact that radon (Rn) is in the decay chain of uranium (U) and that public exposure to natural ionizing radiation is largely due to indoor radon.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGeological classes are used to model the deterministic (drift or trend) component of the Radon potential (Friedmann's RP) in Austria. It is shown that the RP can be grouped according to geological classes, but also according to individual geological units belonging to the same class. Geological classes can thus serve as predictors for mean RP within the classes.
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