ERRICCA: European Research into radon in construction

• Unité de recherche: PCRD EU
• Numéro de projet: 96.0177
• Titre du projet anglais: ERRICCA: European Research into radon in construction

Mots-clé (Anglais)

Reduction of radon levels in buildings

Autre Numéro de projet (Anglais)

EU project number: FI4P-CT96-0064

Programme de recherche (Anglais)

EU-programme: 4. Frame Research Programme - 5.2 Nuclear fission safety

Description succincte (Anglais)

See abstract

Partenaires et organisations internationales (Anglais)

Coordinator: Secr. of State for the Environment, Building Res. Est (UK)

Résumé des résultats (Abstract) (Anglais)

The specific objectives of the Concerted Action were:
- Develop and improve the application of methods to reduce radon levels in buildings and examine the durability of methods over time.
- Consider developments in building design and construction with particular reference to new buildings and to include the problem of radon emissions from materials.
- Consider how legal/building codes aspects can be developed to enhance building protection to reduce radon levels in buildings.
- Improve and apply models of radon entry and transport on issues related to the basic understanding of the problem, in particular improved remediation measures.
- Develop ideas for new collaborative research proposals.

The Swiss Federal Office of Public Health (SFOPH)was represented at the ERRICCA-Meetings in London and Ghent, and at the final workshop in Athens. We participated at the excursions organised in Sweden and Finland during May 1998 and had the opportunity to attend to a specially organised training week on building materials and exhalation measurements at the Technical University in Athens. At all these occasions very fruitful knowledge for the Swiss Radon program could be acquired.
During the visit to Sweden and Finland special interest was given to mitigation methods, experience and durability. As the fundamentals were partly known from literature before, a very interesting possibility was to visit buildings where a method worked in one case but not in the other. This gave a lot of input to the Swiss soil gas research and mitigation programs as well as to the Swiss Radon Handbook.
The aim of the visit at the Technical University in Athens was to get the fundamental knowledge to build and use an exhalation device and to decide about the kind of apparatus. It was clearly seen, that a chamber that encloses the sample completely was needed.
The Swiss activities in the Radon field were presented at the Athens-workshop in form of a Keynote Address, an oral presentation and a poster. The possibilities of using risk mapping were discussed and there was a real interest from the Radon community. The mapping represents the probability of having houses with concentrations over some given threshold. But this has not to be necessarily bound to any area delimitation.
Apart of the scientific knowledge acquired, it was very interesting to meet people involved in different domains of the Radon business. It would be very useful to go on in exchanging of knowledge. The general conclusions of the Athens-workshop are mostly in agreement with the Swiss Radon policy. The main aspects in near future will be: Training and certification, Methods for new constructions, low cost methods for mitigation and soil gas measurements. This would be much easier to achieve in a co-ordinated collaboration of specialists from different domains and countries.

Références bases de données (Anglais)

Swiss Database: Euro-DB of the
State Secretariat for Education and Research
Hallwylstrasse 4
CH-3003 Berne, Switzerland
Tel. [phone]
Swiss Project-Number: 96.0177