Not everything about living in the south of Gran Canaria was going to be nice. Radon gas, in the Castillo del Romeral area, is a radioactive chemical element that gets into houses through the foundations, according to scientists from the University of Las Palmas (ULPGC). It is a colorless, odorless and tasteless gas, which is present in the air we breathe because it emanates, naturally, from soils and rocks. The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) considers radon to be the second most important cause of lung cancer after tobacco. That is why it is so important to measure radon emissions in buildings and specific geographical areas, and thus detect those that need methods and actions that reduce concentration levels.
The Physics Department of the ULPGC points out that it is necessary not to be alarmed because "it is a natural gas that was here before us and even before the Guanches. It is true that, based on the measurements we have made, on the Island There are areas with high levels of radon in soils, but that does not mean that the inhabitants of the interior of San Bartolomé de Tirajana are going to suffer from lung cancer. What's more, it is very complicated, right now, to establish a prevalence relationship between the presence of that gas and the cases of that disease in that area.
Despite being a little-known gas, "it penetrates buildings, through cracks in the foundations, through gaps in walls and even through the bathroom pipes themselves, as well as by diffusion through the enclosures." in contact with the ground,” explains Jesús García Rubiano, director of the Physics Department of the ULPGC and member of the Radiation-Matter Interaction Research Group.
The ULPGC experts have shown that another major source of radon originates in some materials used in housing construction, "especially in low-cost and quality cements made from slag from the metallurgical industry, ashes from thermal power plants or products derived from fertilizer industries, which have a higher content of radioactive elements,” says García Rubiano. And it is estimated that the concentration of radon inside a building grows depending on the porosity of the materials used in its construction.
“In this sense,” explains Jesús García Rubiano, “high concentrations of radon inside homes and workplaces represent a public health problem, since this gas is responsible for approximately 50% of the natural radiation dose due to to ionizing radiation. That is why it is considered an “invisible enemy of health.” The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) considers radon to be the second most important cause of lung cancer after tobacco. That is why it is so important to measure radon emissions in buildings and specific geographical areas, and thus detect those that need methods and actions that reduce concentration levels.
In the action plans and state maps that identify the areas most prone to radon in Spain, it is evident that the islands of Gran Canaria and Tenerife have a high potential, and the rest of the islands appear at low risk. Since 1992, the Radiation-Matter Interaction Research Group (GIRMA) of the Department of Physics of the ULPGC began to carry out, within the framework of some agreements with councils and city councils, previous studies on environmental gamma radioactivity in Gran Canaria, Fuerteventura. and Lanzarote. Starting in 2008 and with funding from competitive projects of the R&D plan of the Nuclear Safety Council (CSN) and the Government of the Canary Islands through the Canarian Research Agency, the ULPGC group of experts has developed a global study of environmental radioactivity in the Eastern Canary Islands, which has formed part of the results obtained in the Natural Radiation Map of Spain.
And in 2012, the GIRMA group has continued work on the radiological characterization of the eastern Canary Islands, sampling the distribution of radon in soils and homes on the islands. Its results have contributed to an advance in knowledge of the radiological environment of the islands of Lanzarote, Fuerteventura and Gran Canaria, and are essential to establish risk areas that can be especially negative for human beings and how to combat them.
