A tentative method to evaluate the building material contribution to indoor gamma dose rate

Building materials are an important source of indoor gamma dose rate, particularly in multistorey buildings. In many cases in which it is difficult to enter the dwellings to measure the indoor gamma dose rate, such as for epidemiological studies and surveys, it is actually interesting to estimate the indoor gamma dose rate. In this paper a new method to estimate the indoor gamma dose rate attributable to the building materials is presented, based on the outdoor measurements performed close to an external wall of a dwelling and a room model elaboration. The method was compared using data collected within the framework of the Italian Epidemiological study SETIL on the aetiology of childhood leukaemia, lymphoma and neuroblastoma.