Abstract
Diverse building materials are utilized for construction all over the world. These emit radioactive pollutants and are liable for continuous exposure of ionizing radiations (radon/thoron) to the indoor environment. As per World Health Organization, radon is recognized as the second significant cause of lung disease subsequent to smoking. Thus, it is of much importance to measure the level of these radioactive gases in dwellings which are constructed using different building materials. The purpose of this chapter is to analyze the impact of different building materials on indoor radon and thoron levels and to find out radon prone regions as it has associated health hazards. In this chapter, indoor radon (222Rn), thoron (220Rn) activity and radon/thoron progeny level were simultaneously measured in 150 houses of twenty locals of district Palwal, Haryana, India. Passive detectors (pinhole twin-cup dosimeter and direct radon/thoron progeny sensors) were utilized for time-integrated monitoring of the exposure period of four months. The variation of radon and thoron gases was observed such as H2 (mud house) > H1 (cemented house) > H3 (traditional house) > H4 (modern house) and H2 (mud house) > H1 (cemented house) > H4 (modern house) > H3 (traditional house) respectively. Similar trends were observed in case of progeny.
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Acknowledgements
This work is supported by the Board of Research in Nuclear Sciences, Government of India, through Project No. (36(4)/14/2014-BRNS/36018) dated 26/02/2016. Authors are also thankful to the people of district Palwal for their cooperation during field work.
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Singh, B., Garg, M., Kant, K. (2022). Effect of Different Building Materials on Indoor Radon/Thoron and Associated Health Hazards. In: Malik, J.A., Marathe, S. (eds) Ecological and Health Effects of Building Materials. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76073-1_25
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