Degu Belete Guadie, Alemu Anteneh Yetsedaw
Physics Department, College of Natural and Computational Sciences, Assosa University, Assosa, Ethiopia.
Environmental Science Department, College of Natural and Computational Sciences, Assosa University, Assosa, Ethiopia.
J Oncol. 2021 Jul 31;2021:6659795. doi: 10.1155/2021/6659795. eCollection 2021.
The adverse human health effects due to ionizing radiation are well known. Radon is the major source of background radiation among those that are of natural origin. It contributes about 55% of the natural radiation dose to humans. It is a colorless, odorless, and tasteless radioactive noble gas that comes from the natural radioactive decay series of uranium. Radon can be found everywhere in the atmosphere and become attached to aerosols in the air. The aerosols carrying radon and its progeny can be inhaled and deposited in different regions of the human respiratory tract. The deposited radioactive aerosols continue to decay and exposing the lung to ionizing radiation can destroy sensitive cells in the lung, causing a mutation that turns to be cancerous. Different countries and international and national organizations put their action levels to reduce radon lung cancer risk. The Environmental Protection Agency recommends 148 Bq/m as the action level. On the other hand, International Commission for Radiation Protection (ICRP) recommends 200 Bq/m as the action level. The main objective of this review is to focus on how radon is established as a health hazard, ways of radon detection and measurements, methods of reducing and controlling high indoor radon concentration, and what are the recommended international action levels of radon concentrations. It mainly focuses on the health perspective of radon studies because it is now a crucial and hot issue in the world. In most developing countries like our country Ethiopia, radon studies are not well investigated.
电离辐射对人类健康的不良影响是众所周知的。氡是天然来源的背景辐射的主要来源。它对人类天然辐射剂量的贡献约为55%。它是一种无色、无味、无嗅的放射性惰性气体，来自铀的天然放射性衰变系列。氡在大气中无处不在，并附着在空气中的气溶胶上。携带氡及其子体的气溶胶可被吸入并沉积在人类呼吸道的不同区域。沉积的放射性气溶胶继续衰变，使肺部暴露于电离辐射中会破坏肺部的敏感细胞，导致突变并进而引发癌症。不同国家以及国际和国家组织设定了各自降低氡致肺癌风险的行动水平。美国环境保护局建议行动水平为148贝克勒尔/立方米。另一方面，国际辐射防护委员会（ICRP）建议行动水平为200贝克勒尔/立方米。本综述的主要目的是关注氡如何被确定为一种健康危害、氡的检测和测量方法、降低和控制室内高氡浓度的方法，以及氡浓度的国际推荐行动水平是多少。它主要关注氡研究的健康视角，因为这现在是世界上一个关键且热门的问题。在大多数发展中国家，比如我国埃塞俄比亚，氡研究尚未得到充分调查。
