Abstract
The present work aims to investigate approaches, measures and detection of indoor radon level in buildings of the department of physics in college of science of Baghdad University. CR-39 solid state nuclear track detectors were used to measure the radon concentrations inside the rooms, including five laboratories and five workplace rooms in ground and first storey of the department. The average radon concentration at first storey was found to be 43.1±13.2 Bq/m3 and 40.1±13.4 Bq/m3 at the ground storey. The highest level of radon concentration at the first storey in the radioactive sources store was 87.5±29 Bq/m3 while at the ground storey in room(2) was 70.2±24 Bq/m3 which is due to the existence radioactive sources in some selected places at the buildings.
Highlights
There are several different isotope of radon, the one that is of greatest concern as a potential human health threat is Radon Rn-222
The indoor radon concentrations at rooms and laboratories and the average concentration in the investigated sites were evaluated using the calibration curve Fig.(3) and Table 1.This table shows that the average radon concentration in the ground and first storey was 40.1±13.4 Bq/m3 and 43.1±13.2 Bq/m3 respectively
These radon concentrations are due to the contribution of radon emanations from soil located under the building, and the construction materials, and due to the fact that the non-residential buildings remain closed after the hours working and have poor ventilation
Summary
There are several different isotope of radon, the one that is of greatest concern as a potential human health threat is Radon Rn-222. Because Rn-222 is a gas, it moves freely in the air spaces between rocks and in soils It becomes a human health concern when it leaks from the underlying soil into homes and other buildings. As far as human dwellings are concerned the possible enhanced risk could be expected only in a rather small faction of homes depending essentially on the building materials ventilation features and soil characteristics. These factors are directly responsible for enhanced input and subsequent stagnation of Rn-222 in indoor air. The solid state nuclear track detectors (SSNTDs) have been widely used for the measurement of radon levels in dwellings under different conditions [613]. Cs (Bq / m3 ) x s t x slope t where Cs: radon concentration of Ra-226 . ρs, ρx: track density number of the detectors exposed to Ra-226 and of distributed detectors respectively, and t: exposure time in days
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