From the collective to the individual radon risk exposure: an insight in the current European regulation

Abstract

Radon (222Rn) is a radioactive gas considered the major source of ionizing radiation exposure for the population and represents a significant health risk when it accumulates indoor environments. In Europe the regulation has been implemented in order to address the issue of indoor radon exposure, including pose national reference levels and the identification of the so-called Radon Priority Areas (RPAs). Although the European directive states that RPAs are defined as those areas where the annual average Indoor Radon Concentrations in a significant number of dwellings is expected to exceed the reference level the concept and interpretation of “significant number of buildings” in the European Directive remained unclear. According to this idea, radon is classified as an anthropogenic hazard since it has a strong correlation with IRC. However, indoor radon levels can vary significantly at the municipal level also among neighbouring dwellings, mostly due to differences in building characteristics and inhabitants’ habits. Since in this way the radon natural origin may be bypassed, many authors (mostly geologists) propose to use the Geogenic Radon Potential (GRP) as a hazard indicator. The GRP represents the amount of radon that can potentially influx within buildings from geogenic sources. Being the radon hazard and risk concepts still debated, in the last year, researchers proposed a clear transition from the radon hazard to the more comprehensive radon risk concept proposing that mapping this geo-hazard (GRP) is a fundamental step to define the collective radon risk exposure. The Collective Risk Areas (CRAs) are composed by many possible little Individual Risk Areas (IRAs). Considering that the radiation protection aimed to reduce the detriment, radon abatement policies have to take care of these CRAs not forgetting areas with high individual risk in order to protect individuals from high exposure. On the one hand the collective risk areas have proposed as geological-based risk areas; on the other hand, the individual risk areas are strictly linked to the Indoor Radon Concentration (IRC) and may be assimilated to the “classical” RPAs concept. Considering the absence of an unambiguous methodology at the European scale to define the RPAs and the proposed CRAs mapping as the first step to define the IRAs (“classical” RPA), with this work we aimed to lay the foundation to create a definitive methodology for the individual risk-based RAPs mapping considering, first of all, the number of people involved. The test area chosen for this study is the Bolzano province (Italy) due to the high availability of potential predictors variables and a detailed IRC survey campaign on the entire provincial territory. Starting from this we proposed the first IRAs map (i.e., the first individual risk-based RPAs definition) using a set of Machine Learning techniques allowing to connect and validate the geo-hazard with real IRC measured in the province, with the aim to predict both the collective risk and the possible individual detriment as required by the European regulation.