Sunday is good day for another “interesting” #property survey, but this time with NO happy end for our client. A little over 5 years ago, a relative of ours had decided to buy a home. He had bought a fairly decent, three-bedroom apartment. Massive, old construction from the early 1970s. A few months had passed since the purchase when he contacted Property Scan, asking us to inspect the home. In the first three rooms, we didn’t come across any issue. Almost no electromagnetic pollution, well-dried walls, slightly worse #airquality, but still the apartment was on the first floor next to a busy boulevard.
We were in the penultimate two rooms when the Geiger counter started behaving strangely. At first, I thought I couldn’t see the decimal place well…. I made several laps and came back to the same spot where the meter had read over 1,000 µSv/h. I measured again the adjacent area – the values were between 0.900 and 1,100 µSv/h. I held my breath and continued with the last room. I decided that I should once again return to the problem area. I took the measurements in the last room, which was adjacent to the one with the high gamma measures. All the results were normal… until I measured the mirrored side of the wall dividing the two rooms. Again, the Geiger “jumped” to 0.800 – 1,000 µSv/h. “It can’t be a coincidence.”, I thought. In the same area on both sides of the same wall. I shared my concerns with the client. We took a few more measurements of the same are, but the Geiger counter did not “want to change its mind”.
Is an average of 1,000 µSv/h too much?
It is typical for construction materials used in the interior to have a gamma of 0.150 to 0.220, sometimes 0.250 µSv/h. Above 1,000 µSv/h … we saw for the first time and luckily to us until now the last time.
The equivalent of 1,000 µSv/h is close to 9.13 mSv/y (millisieverts per year). This is the maximum annual radiation dose for miners in U.S. uranium mines. A rate that is three times higher than that for uranium miners in Canada and Australia. Given the fact that the owner of the flat had planned these two rooms to be for his kids, we strongly recommended that he should not move into the home until he had identified the source of the problem and fixed it.
Of course, we should state that this is the gamma at the source, that is, the wall, and not at the places where you will sleep, study, work and play. For a precise study, we suggested using a dosimeter for several days, which would count the radiation received by the body and not emitted by the walls, thereby eliminating factors such as distance, clothing, etc. However, our buyer decided not to do a dosimetry and cancelled the repair. Unfortunately, to this day, the apartment remains uninhabited.
Conclusion: We can’t always help on time, especially if you call us after the purchase, but at least we can protect you from significant #health consequences.
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