Within the framework of a French national monitoring program to survey the man-made radioactivity in the environment, several power plants and research facilities on the territory use environmental air monitors for unwanted releases of radioactive aerosols. High sensitivity and lack of false alarms are all important for environmental air monitors. The project aims to conduct investigations to improve operation of environmental air monitors, particularly under conditions where a lot of nonradioactive dust may be deposited on the filters (conditions of high dust loading). The dust may increase the frequency with which filters must be changed and can lead to an underestimation of the real activity. This underestimation is due to deteriorated alpha energy resolution and response specificity to the radionuclides of interest. In this study, our objective was to find experimental correction factors for the degraded activity measurements taking into account the alpha absorption in the dust loading. © The Author 2010. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.