Geochemical fingerprinting of a radon anomaly: high-resolution PCA–ANOVA case study, Castleisland, SW Ireland
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Radon represents a global health risk, and so accurate delineation of radon-prone areas is a prerequisite for evidence-based radon mitigation and public health protection. National probabilistic radon models of Ireland, based on 1:1 M bedrock geological maps that group the Clare Shales with limestones achieve ∼74% accuracy. Despite the high accuracy of Ireland's national radon map, some discrepancies still exist. Using geochemical and geostatistical methods, we investigated a significant and persistent radon anomaly over the Clare Shale Formation at Castleisland, Co. Kerry, Ireland. Fifty-six topsoil samples collected from the A-horizon within a 6 km 2 grid, with samples spaced every 250–500 m apart, were included in the analysis and compared to co-located soil-gas radon measurements. Following centred and isometric log-ratio transformations of inductively coupled plasma mass spectroscopy (ICP-MS)/optical emission spectroscopy (OES) data for 37 elements, soils above the Clare Shales exhibited a median U concentration of 4 mg kg −1 (range 1.4–37 mg kg −1 ). Pearson correlations between log 10 soil-gas radon and individual elements peaked at a Pearson correlation coefficient ( r ) = 0.57 for Sr (coefficient of determination ( R 2 ) = 0.32), with similarly strong associations for V ( r = 0.54), Ag ( r = 0.52), P ( r = 0.47), Au ( r = 0.46), U ( r = 0.45) and Tl ( r = 0.43) (all P < 0.001). One-way ANOVA indicates radon class categories explain a median 43.8% of variance in 14 trace elements, while bedrock geology explains 27.8%. Shared tracers (U, V, P, Ag, Sb) underscore overlapping lithological and radiogenic controls. Principal components 1–3 (PC1–PC3) capture 62.9% of total variance (PC1 = 31.8%, PC2 = 17.2%, PC3 = 13.9%). PC1 is defined by strong positive loadings on Sc, Mg, Fe, Al, Th, Ni and Co, and negative loadings on Sr, Ag, U, P and V, neatly contrasting shale-derived, high-radon soils from carbonate terrains. This study demonstrates that local-scale lithogeochemical proxies, resolved at 250 m and calibrated against a 1:100 k geological framework, can effectively delineate elevated radon sources. This approach offers a systematic means to investigate map anomalies, refine national radon models, enhance spatial accuracy, and support evidence-based radon risk assessment and public health protection initiatives.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".