We like to thank all the families and children who participated in the survey and exposure measurements. We sent out questionnaires to 8300 families in February 2019. In total 2830 families completed and returned the questionnaire. These families provided information on sources of radiation exposure in their children that is of great value for this research.
Many families and children also agree to participate in exposure measurements. Thanks to the their dedicated efforts, we have so far collected exposure measurements for more than 140 children across Switzerland. These children wore the dosimeters for a period of 5 days and provided detailed information on their activities during this time. We will now pause during winter and plan to resume the measurements in spring 2020.
We are currently extracting all the readings from the measurement devices and entering the data from the questionnaires and activity diaries. We hope to have all the data entered and prepared for analysis by early summer 2020.
In parallel, we have conducted some preliminary analyses of the data already entered. We are developing a geographical model to estimate exposure to natural background radiation in Switzerland and will use the measurements made by the participating children to validate this model.
