Exposure of the population of southern greece to radon risk assessment

A large-scale radon survey has been carried out from 1995 to 1998 in southern Greece, in order toestimate the radon concentration in Greek dwellings and the exposure of the Greek population toradon. The design was administratively orientated. The statistical criterion for the selection ofsampling locations and the distribution of radon dosimeters was the percentage of dwellings of eachlevel of the administratively classifications in respect to the above level. This way of distributionassured that all the inhabited geographical regions were covered. The measurements were conductedwith the use of track etch detectors constructed in the Medical Physics Department, AthensUniversity. The total measurement set consisted of 1137 samples. It was found that the data fit to a lognormal distribution with average of 55.1 Bqm-3, an arithmetic standard deviation of 105.6 Bqm-3, a geometric mean of 44.0 Bqm-3 and a geometric standard deviation of 2.40 Bqm-3. It was found that both theannual exposure of potential alpha energy and the effective doses present geographic variations.Potential alpha energy exposure values ranged between 0.0024 and 2.184 WLM y -1, while effectivedose values, between 0.09 and 10.62 mSv y-1. The population weighted means were found to be 0.202WLM y-1 and 0.76 mSv y-1, respectively. The total lifetime risk for the Greek population was calculated 4.4x10-3, which means that about 4.4 out of 1000 persons die from lung cancer due to radon.