Study of gel materials as radioactive 222Rn gas detectors.

Commercial hair gel material (polyvinyl pyrolydone triethanolamine carbopol in water) and bacteriological agar (phycocolloid extracted from a group of red-purple algae, usually Gelidium sp.) have been studied as radioactive radon gas detectors. The detection method is based on the diffusion of the radioactive gas in the gel material, and the subsequent measurement of trapped products of the natural decay of radon by gamma spectrometry. From the several radon daughters with gamma radiation emission (214Pb, 214Bi, 214Po, 210Pb, 210Po), two elements, 214Pb (0.352 MeV) and 214Bi (0.609 MeV), were chosen for the analysis in this work; in order to determine the best sensitivity, corrections were made for the short half-life of the analysed isotopes. For the gamma spectrometry analysis, a hyperpure germanium solid state detector was used, associated with a PC multichannel analyser card with Maestro and Microsoft Excel software. The results show the viability of the method: a linear response in a wide radon concentration range (450-10,000 Bq m(-3)), reproducibility of data, easy handling and low cost of the gel material. This detection methodology opens new possibilities for measurements of radon and other radioactive gases.