Radiological Impact of Building Material: Characterization of a Village Entirely Built out of Stone in Tuscany, Italy

Abstract

Tuscany, with its mixed geology, offers a great variety of stones that are used to build entire villages. In this paper, two of these building materials are considered: Rosso Ammonitco and Pietra Serena. In particular, the activity concentration of 226Ra, 232Th and 40K have been analysed in order to estimate the value of the gamma index. In addition to this, the X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy has been carried out to obtain a chemical characterization of the stones. Although these kind of stones are not subjected to radiological characterization, the approach used was the one reported in Radiation Protection 112, also implemented in the Italian Legislative Decree 101/2020, because of their lithographical peculiarity and their employment in construction.