Multi-level continuous monitoring of residential radon in the urban contest of Rome

The urbanized area of Rome is largely built over volcanic deposits, characterized by  a significant radionuclides content and radon emanation potential.  A first step towards the mitigation of the indoor radon exposure is the accurate monitoring of workplaces and residential dwellings. Due to the complex interactions among many environmental parameters on different time scales, a proper assessment of radon diffusion dynamics and concentration variations can be better achieved by means of active monitoring approaches. We present here the results of one year of continuous measurements conducted in 6 premises (5 apartments and a basement) at different floors of the same building in the Esquilino district, in the historical center of Rome. The simultaneous tracking of different floors should cancel the influence of geogenic radon and of building characteristics like age, typology, and construction materials, and reveal the characteristics of the gas emanation and transport inside the buildings, and of its temporal fluctuations, with the final goal to select the most suitable preventive measures to reduce radon exposure. Conducting the experiment in the Roman urban contest, we cannot ignore the specificity of the retrieved data, affected not only by endogenous factors like heating and ventilation of the apartments, but also by exogenous factors like the urban heat islands effect.