Indoor Radon Research in the Asia-Pacific Region

Abstract

Indoor radon is a major hazard to human health; it is one of the leading causes of lung cancer. Therefore, radon research in Asia has intensified recently due to the growing awareness of the harm that radon poses. An analysis of the collected literature data showed that in Asia–Oceania, some regions have—or are believed to have—little indoor radon problems due to climate and low Rn ground. It can be concluded that countries have their own approaches, techniques, and protocols. Data were not harmonized within each region; however, measurement techniques were compared by regional intercomparison exercises. The situation differs regarding studies on the usability of radon as a tracer or potential predictor of tectonic phenomena, as some countries are in seismically active zones, such as India, Taiwan, China, Japan, etc. India and Taiwan are global leaders in this research, as well as Italy, which is another seismically affected country. We provide an overview of radon-related surveying and research activities conducted in the western, southern, and eastern Asian regions over the past few years. Additionally, we observed that the number of indoor radon measurements per million inhabitants increases as the human development index (HDI) increases.

Preliminary Population Exposure to Indoor Radon and Thoron in Dhaka City, Bangladesh

“…The questionnaire content was fixed based on the author's consideration of Rn dose parameters and the assumptions of previous Rn studies in Bangladesh [12][13][14][15][16][17][18]. In addition, the questionnaire content of nationwide Rn surveys of Japan carried out by the Rn team of the National Institute of Radiological Sciences (NIRS) was learned in designing the content [34][35][36]. Questionnaire estimation was performed by the authors by recording the dwelling parameters (i.e., building materials, detector positions in rooms) during in situ measurement and interviewing the owner/representative person of each dwelling.…”

Assessment of Indoor Radon Gas Concentration in National Open University of Nigeria: A Case Study of Calabar Study Centre

“…They came to the conclusion that radon is the primary source of exposure and dose in the populations of both Greece and Cyprus. Furthermore, indoor radon was investigated by Janik et al [14] to be a serious threat to people's health and one of the main factors in lung cancer. They gave a summary of radon-related surveying and research projects carried out in recent years in western, southern, and eastern Asia.…”