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Radon exposure is rising steadily within the modern North American residential environment, and is increasingly uniform across seasons

Human-made buildings can artificially concentrate radioactive radon gas of geologic origin, exposing occupants to harmful alpha particle radiation emissions that damage DNA and increase lung cancer risk. We examined how North American residential radon exposure varies by modern environmental design,...

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Autores principales: Stanley, Fintan K. T., Irvine, Jesse L., Jacques, Weston R., Salgia, Shilpa R., Innes, Daniel G., Winquist, Brandy D., Torr, David, Brenner, Darren R., Goodarzi, Aaron A.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6890734/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31796862
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-54891-8
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author Stanley, Fintan K. T.
Irvine, Jesse L.
Jacques, Weston R.
Salgia, Shilpa R.
Innes, Daniel G.
Winquist, Brandy D.
Torr, David
Brenner, Darren R.
Goodarzi, Aaron A.
author_facet Stanley, Fintan K. T.
Irvine, Jesse L.
Jacques, Weston R.
Salgia, Shilpa R.
Innes, Daniel G.
Winquist, Brandy D.
Torr, David
Brenner, Darren R.
Goodarzi, Aaron A.
author_sort Stanley, Fintan K. T.
collection PubMed
description Human-made buildings can artificially concentrate radioactive radon gas of geologic origin, exposing occupants to harmful alpha particle radiation emissions that damage DNA and increase lung cancer risk. We examined how North American residential radon exposure varies by modern environmental design, occupant behaviour and season. 11,727 residential buildings were radon-tested using multiple approaches coupled to geologic, geographic, architectural, seasonal and behavioural data with quality controls. Regional residences contained 108 Bq/m(3) geometric mean radon (min < 15 Bq/m(3); max 7,199 Bq/m(3)), with 17.8% ≥ 200 Bq/m(3). Pairwise analysis reveals that short term radon tests, despite wide usage, display limited value for establishing dosimetry, with precision being strongly influenced by time of year. Regression analyses indicates that the modern North American Prairie residential environment displays exceptionally high and worsening radon exposure, with more recent construction year, greater square footage, fewer storeys, greater ceiling height, and reduced window opening behaviour all associated with increased radon. Remarkably, multiple test approaches reveal minimal winter-to-summer radon variation in almost half of properties, with the remainder having either higher winter or higher summer radon. This challenges the utility of seasonal correction values for establishing dosimetry in risk estimations, and suggests that radon-attributable cancers are being underestimated.
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spelling pubmed-68907342019-12-10 Radon exposure is rising steadily within the modern North American residential environment, and is increasingly uniform across seasons Stanley, Fintan K. T. Irvine, Jesse L. Jacques, Weston R. Salgia, Shilpa R. Innes, Daniel G. Winquist, Brandy D. Torr, David Brenner, Darren R. Goodarzi, Aaron A. Sci Rep Article Human-made buildings can artificially concentrate radioactive radon gas of geologic origin, exposing occupants to harmful alpha particle radiation emissions that damage DNA and increase lung cancer risk. We examined how North American residential radon exposure varies by modern environmental design, occupant behaviour and season. 11,727 residential buildings were radon-tested using multiple approaches coupled to geologic, geographic, architectural, seasonal and behavioural data with quality controls. Regional residences contained 108 Bq/m(3) geometric mean radon (min < 15 Bq/m(3); max 7,199 Bq/m(3)), with 17.8% ≥ 200 Bq/m(3). Pairwise analysis reveals that short term radon tests, despite wide usage, display limited value for establishing dosimetry, with precision being strongly influenced by time of year. Regression analyses indicates that the modern North American Prairie residential environment displays exceptionally high and worsening radon exposure, with more recent construction year, greater square footage, fewer storeys, greater ceiling height, and reduced window opening behaviour all associated with increased radon. Remarkably, multiple test approaches reveal minimal winter-to-summer radon variation in almost half of properties, with the remainder having either higher winter or higher summer radon. This challenges the utility of seasonal correction values for establishing dosimetry in risk estimations, and suggests that radon-attributable cancers are being underestimated. Nature Publishing Group UK 2019-12-03 /pmc/articles/PMC6890734/ /pubmed/31796862 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-54891-8 Text en © The Author(s) 2019 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Stanley, Fintan K. T.
Irvine, Jesse L.
Jacques, Weston R.
Salgia, Shilpa R.
Innes, Daniel G.
Winquist, Brandy D.
Torr, David
Brenner, Darren R.
Goodarzi, Aaron A.
Radon exposure is rising steadily within the modern North American residential environment, and is increasingly uniform across seasons
title Radon exposure is rising steadily within the modern North American residential environment, and is increasingly uniform across seasons
title_full Radon exposure is rising steadily within the modern North American residential environment, and is increasingly uniform across seasons
title_fullStr Radon exposure is rising steadily within the modern North American residential environment, and is increasingly uniform across seasons
title_full_unstemmed Radon exposure is rising steadily within the modern North American residential environment, and is increasingly uniform across seasons
title_short Radon exposure is rising steadily within the modern North American residential environment, and is increasingly uniform across seasons
title_sort radon exposure is rising steadily within the modern north american residential environment, and is increasingly uniform across seasons
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6890734/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31796862
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-54891-8
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