Embodied Energy and Global Warming Potential of Radon Preventive Measures Applied in New Family Houses

Radon inside buildings represents the primary source of human exposure to ionising radiation in the world. Studies in many countries have shown that high indoor radon levels are the second most frequent cause of lung cancer. This gas can enter a building through cracks, fractures, or other leaky places in structures that are in contact with the soil, incrementing the radon concentration indoors. The radon protective measures on buildings represent embodied and operational environmental impacts, which were more or less neglected so far. Nevertheless, as buildings have become more energy-efficient, the radon preventive measures impacts are recognised as being more and more significant and shall be thoroughly investigated. This paper performs a comparative analysis of embodied primary renewable and non-renewable energy and global warming potential (GWP) for alternative preventive measures. On this basis, the paper aims to assess the additional contribution of embodied impacts of three types of radon preventive measures for a single-family house located in a potential radon prone area. The embodied impacts are calculated for the A1-A3 LCA stages associated with the radon preventive measures and compared them against each other to find the additional embodied impacts compared to a family house without radon protection. The results indicate that the embodied energy and the GWP increase as more protective elements the measure contains, also considering the impacts of soil excavation.