Radon gas detector (Ohio State University at Newark campus…

This piece of equipment is a radon gas detector. Many were used for half-a-year in Founders Hall at the Newark campus of Ohio State University, from summer to fall 2019. Licking County, Ohio has a radon-producing bedrock unit called the Raccoon Shale. The Raccoon is composed of fine-grained siliciclastics and is one of several members in a marine succession called the Cuyahoga Formation (Lower Mississippian). The type locality is Moots Run, a tributary of Raccoon Creek in Licking County. Typical lithologies are gray mudshales and some siltstone to fine-grained sandstone interbeds. Dark-colored shales often have a uranium (U) component. Uranium is radioactive and one of the decay products is radon gas. Relatively high indoor radon gas levels are known in east-central Ohio. Before the detectors were installed, I predicted that they would not indicate high levels of the gas in my building at OSUN campus. Why did I predict this? The Raccoon Shale does not floor this university campus (no one here asked a geologist first). The nearby hills are composed of bedrock, covered with a thin soil layer, plus vegetation and anthropogenic debris (= neighborhoods). But the university buildings are atop a soil-covered, sediment-filled, glacial valley. Turns out I was right (of course). The (slightly censored) results are in - the detectors measured radon gas levels below the government-set limit of 4 picocuries of radiation per liter of air. The actual measured levels have not been disclosed (grrrr). The geology of radon in Licking County, Ohio is more complicated than this, however. A study of indoor radon levels versus the type of geologic surface materials was done in the early 2000s at Denison University. See Lackmeyer (2002) for details. ----------------------------------------- Reference cited: Lackmeyer (2002) - Radon levels in Granville and Alexandria: an assessment of geologic factors. Denison Journal of the Geosciences 16: 36-41.

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