When I first started writing this post over a month ago (Jul 2023), there was no reason to change the title. I keep it that way, as literally before the last surveyed property, our property surveys in Western Europe have not unearthed any issues, much to our happiness and most of all to the peace of mind of our clients.
At the end of July and the first half of August, we surveyed eight properties in Europe. From Germany, through Italy, France, England, and all the way to Scotland. We have observed that the small buildings had no basements and ground floors. The larger buildings (over 20 apartments) had underground and ground floors, but were very well ventilated. In our opinion, this is a key reason why we did not find radon above the norms anywhere.
A single property in France showed radon values of 2.4 pCi/l (89 Bq/m3) in the underground area, which is close to the orange zone, but only during a period without ventilation. When normal ventilation of the basement was triggered, things quickly improved with radon in the range of 30-50 Bq/m3.
The construction materials used in the properties were impeccable. Nowhere did the Geiger read more than 0.120 µSv/h, with values prevailing of 0.066 to 0.083 µSv/h. Air quality even in the metropolis areas of London, Paris and Munich was at worst in the yellow zone, but predominantly in the green one.
The only place that to an extend surprised us was a house in the Lago Maggiore region. We were expecting higher background gamma values, as the Joint Research Center in Ispra, Italy is only 2.5km away from that property. We knew that nuclear research was being done there for peaceful purposes, but we assumed that background gamma levels would be similar to those nearby nuclear power plants (0.100-0.150 µSv/h). Much to our, and our client’s, unpleasant surprise, the Geiger read values above 0.300 µSv/h and peaks above 0.350 µSv/h. We checked the European radiological map, which has four monitoring stations in the region, and our datapoints were similar. We advised our client not to proceed with the purchase of property within that close radius of the research center.
Eventually, our survey trip became the “Not-so-boring Europe”.