Radon Degassing and DNA modifications of people living around the Messina Strait: possible implications with the 1908, M7.2 earthquake

Abstract

Geochemical and genetic results collected over the seismic area of the Messina Straits (Sicily, Italy) are crossed together showing an absolutely new scenario on what the effects of a strong earthquake might be on the human health with genetic modifications. Data from HLA investigation carried out on 10000 human samples to identify the genetic code of Donors Marrow to be used for transplantation purposes, have been crossed with the results of natural soil degassing to find a possible explanation of the anomalous distribution of an antigen (DR11) having the highest concentration among the inhabitants of Messina and Reggio Calabria. The soil degassing measurements revealed for the same area anomalous radon degassing with dynamic concentrations up to 80.000 Bq/m3 (at least two orders of magnitude above the values of 400 Bq/m3 imposed as upper threshold by the national law and European rules for the indoor radon activity exposure. On the other hand, the knowledge about Radon behavior is reasonably well developed about the effects of radon indoor, but very poor information are nowadays available on the natural occurrence of this radioactive gas and the related environmental contamination, and what kind of effects it has on the living matter. The collected results claim an improvement of our knowledge on the human health-natural radon degassing relationships above all over the seismic prone areas, where DNA modifications with anomalous distribution of some antigens should be investigated.