Abstract
Abstract. A hypothetical Pan-European Indoor Radon Map has been developed using summary statistics estimated from 1.2 million indoor radon samples. In this study we have used the arithmetic mean (AM) over grid cells of 10 km × 10 km to predict a mean indoor radon concentration at ground-floor level of buildings in the grid cells where no or few data (N<30) are available. Four interpolation techniques have been tested: inverse distance weighting (IDW), ordinary kriging (OK), collocated cokriging with uranium concentration as a secondary variable (CCK), and regression kriging with topsoil geochemistry and bedrock geology as secondary variables (RK). Cross-validation exercises have been carried out to assess the uncertainties associated with each method. Of the four methods tested, RK has proven to be the best one for predicting mean indoor radon concentrations; and by combining the RK predictions with the AM of the grids with 30 or more measurements, a Pan-European Indoor Radon Map has been produced. This map represents a first step towards a European radon exposure map and, in the future, a radon dose map.
Highlights
Radon (Rn) is the major contributor to the ionizing radiation dose received by the general population, which is the second cause of lung cancer death after smoking (WHO, 2009)
We have tested four interpolation techniques: two that use solely indoor radon concentration measurements, viz. inverse distance weighting (IDW) and ordinary kriging (OK), and another two which take into account geological information, viz. collocated cokriging with the uranium concentration in topsoil as a secondary variable (CCK) and regression kriging with topsoil geochemistry and bedrock geology as secondary variables (RK)
The 5 × 10-fold cross-validation (Fig. 8 and Table 4) shows that geostatistical techniques (i.e. OK, Collocated cokriging (CCK), Regression kriging (RK)), which take into account the spatial autocorrelation of the data, generally perform better than IDW
Summary
Radon (Rn) is the major contributor to the ionizing radiation dose received by the general population, which is the second cause of lung cancer death after smoking (WHO, 2009). Since lung cancer survival rates after 5 years can be below 20 % (Cheng et al, 2016), a reduction in radon exposure will have a significant positive impact on the health of the general population. In this context, the EU recently revised and consolidated the Basic Safety Standards Directive (Council Directive 2013/59/EURATOM), which aims to reduce the number of radon-induced lung cancer cases. Because of high local variability, large-scale Rn maps do not inform about Rn concentration in a particular building. Instead, this requires measurements in that building
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