The most recent international intercomparisons of radon and thoron monitors with the NIRS radon and thoron chambers

The fifth international intercomparison for radon and fourth for thoron monitors were conducted at National Institute of Radiological Sciences (Japan) with the radon and thoron chambers. The tests were made under two different exposures to radon and two exposures (in two rounds due to limited space in the thoron chamber) to thoron. In these most recent intercomparisons, two new graphical methods recommended by the ISO standard, Mandel's h statistic and the Youden plot, were implemented to evaluate the consistency between laboratories and within laboratories.The presented data indicated that the performance quality of laboratories for radon measurement as expressed by the percentage difference parameter has been stable since the first international intercomparison for passive monitors carried out in 2007, and it amounted to around 50 for 10 % of the difference from the reference value. The thoron exercise showed that further development and additional studies to improve its measuring methods and reliability are needed.