Turtiainen and colleagues from the Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority in Finland (STUK) have published their new paper “Variation in Radon Concentration Between Apartments in Housing Cooperatives” in MDPI Atmosphere.

Housing cooperatives, a common form of housing in Nordic countries, oversee tasks like building maintenance, renovations, and radon mitigation. This study examined radon level variations in nearly 16,000 apartments across 3,552 cooperatives. Radon concentrations within cooperatives followed a log-normal distribution, with geometric standard deviations (GSD) varying widely. Median GSDs ranged from 1.5 to 2.0, depending on the number of apartments measured. A predictive model was developed to estimate the likelihood of apartments exceeding radon reference levels based on the cooperative’s geometric mean radon concentration. The findings emphasise the importance of measuring radon levels in all apartments to ensure safety. The study’s findings can also be utilised to address uncertainties in radon concentration modelling, as apartments within the same housing cooperative are typically assigned identical parameter values (year of construction, type of base floor, ventilation method, etc.) in the models.

Click here for more of RadoNorm’s latest publications.