NATURAL RADIOACTIVITY AND RADON EXHALATION IN STONY MATERIALS

Recently, radon sources have been a matter of concern, as high levels have been measured in some houses. This work contributes to the assess ment of radon exhalation from those stones which are mostly used for b uilding materials, The first part of this paper concerns measurements of natural radionuclide concentrations (U-238, Th-232) in building mat erials by means of gamma-spectrometry, The second part deals with the determination of stone exhalation rate using a particular instrument, called an 'emanometer', designed and developed at our institute. As a general result, this research indicates that the radon exhalation is d etermined more by the peculiar characteristics of the building materia l than by its specific content of radium. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Limited