ABSTRACT
The European Council Directive 2013/59/Euratom of December 2013 established inter alia the uniform basic safety standards for the health protection of individuals being subject to occupational exposure. In Article 54, a new obligation is introduced-to regulate radon exposure in workplaces. The EU Member States are obliged to set national reference value for radon in workplaces, delineate the areas where the regulation will be applied and determine the concerned types of workplaces. The presented article shows the Czech approach to implementation of this obligation in national legislation and the first design of regulator's control activities to set the obligation in practice.
Subject(s)
Occupational Exposure/standards , Radiation Monitoring/standards , Radiation Protection/standards , Radon/analysis , Workplace , Czech Republic , European Union , Humans , Occupational Exposure/analysisABSTRACT
During the Eighth International Conference on High Levels of Natural Radiation and Radon Areas held in autumn 2014 at Prague, the third intercomparison of radon/thoron gas and radon short-lived decay products measurement instruments was organised by and held at the Natural Radiation Division of the National Radiation Protection Institute (NRPI; SÚRO v.v.i.) in Prague. The intercomparison was newly focussed also on continuous monitors with active sampling adapters capable to distinguish radon/thoron gas in their mix field.The results of radon gas measurements carried out in the big NRPI radon chamber indicated very well an average deviation of up to 5 % from the reference NRPI value for 80 % of all the exposed instruments. The results of equilibrium equivalent concentration continuous monitors indicated an average deviation of up to 5 % from the reference NRPI value for 40 % of all the exposed instruments and their ~8-10 % shift compared with the NRPI. The results of investigated ambient conditions upon response of exposed continuous monitors indicated influence of aerosol changes upon response of radon monitors with an active air sampling adapters through the filter, only. The exposures of both radon/thoron gas discriminative continuous monitors and passive detectors have been indicated inconsistent results: on one hand, their excellent agreement up to several per cent for both the gases, and on the other hand, systematic unsatisfactory differences up to 40 %. Additional radon/thoron exercises are recommended to improve both the instruments themselves and quality of their operators.
