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EFFECT OF NATURAL VENTILATION ON RADON AND RADON PROGENY LEVELS IN HOUSES
Citation:
Cavallo, A., K. Gadsby, T. Reddy, AND R. Socolow. EFFECT OF NATURAL VENTILATION ON RADON AND RADON PROGENY LEVELS IN HOUSES. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, D.C., EPA/600/D-91/264.
Description:
The paper discusses the effect of natural ventilation on radon and radon progeny levels in houses. ontradicting the widely held assumption that ventilation is ineffective in reducing indoor radon concentrations, experiments in a research house have shown that the basement radon level can be reduced by a factor of 5 to 10 using only natural ventilation. easurement of the outdoor-basement pressure differential and the radon entry rate shows that this unexpectedly large reduction in indoor radon levels is caused by two complementary physical processes: 1) the obvious one, dilution, which lowers radon concentrations by adding uncontaminated outdoor air; and (2) although less evident, introducing a pressure break in the system through an open basement window which, in turn, reduces the outdoor-basement pressure differential and the rate at which radon-laden soil gas is drawn into the house. he radon entry rate was found to be a linear function of basement depressurization up to a differential pressure of about 4 Pa, as would be expected for laminar soil gas flow; opening two basement windows approximately doubled the building air exchange rate and reduced the radon entry rate by up to a factor of 5.