RADON, The Silent Killer

Radon Be-Gone

Well, if you are still reading after that poorly planned attention-getter of a title and that frightening rhyme, I applaud your persistence and promise that I shall try to improve my rhetoric as we proceed down this post. It also probably comes as no surprise that today I'll be talking about radon and I'll hopefully pose some facts about it that you haven't heard of before.

Radon could be called a silent killer. I guess truthfully with it's method of killing its more dangerous in that it also can be seen or smelled. It is usually found as an elemental gas that is release from the soil into the atmosphere where it usually is at such low concentrations that it's "killing" effects are rather negligible. However, more often than not the Radon gets trapped in buildings, houses, basements, crawlspaces and such where it can collect and pool, growing to concentrations that are no longer negligible. As another side not, it could also be stated that the Radon gas is framed as the killer really. Due to its radioactivity, Radon slowly produces daughter nuclides that should actually be credited as the killers. These daughters are much more active than the Radon and release the particles that are very detrimental to our health. When the mixture of daughters and Radon is inhaled, the noble gas, Radon, is very likely to be easily and naturally exhaled. However, the daughters have a tendency to bind inside of our lungs and irradiate our insides, producing deadly alpha particles. These alpha particles increase our risk of respiratory cancers (such as lung cancer), even despite the fact that you have heeded my earlier post staying away from smoking in hopes of dodging this.

So what can be done to prevent the attack from Radon daughters?? Hopefully, you don't have to do anything. Radon gas naturally is part of our atmosphere in a low concentration. Hopefully, inside your home you have a comparably low concentration inside your home. One can perform radon testing inside one's house to test this against the EPA standard of being less than 4pCi/L. This is the EPA's action level,  due to this exposure having stochastic effects there is no safe dose level. Interestingly this leads to the first big fact for this blog. (2)

After the EPA screened randomly they found that "nearly 1 in 3 homes checked in seven states and on three Indian lands had screening levels over 4 pCi/L, the EPA's recommended action level for radon exposure."(2)

But then what about the danger to these levels? Well the EPA also stated, "Most scientists agree that the risk of death for radon at 4 pCi/l is approximately 1 in 100. At the 4 pCi/l EPA action guideline level, radon carries approximately 1000 times the risk of death as any other EPA carcinogen." To even further put this into perspective a family living in such a house would receive a dose somewhere around 35 times the limit of what a nuclear waste site may release at the fence edge of this site. A nuclear engineer considers this 4pCi to be somewhere around 35 times what he thinks is reasonable to release from this nuclear waste itself. It is thus very important to get your new home tested for radon gas.(2)

If you do have high levels of radon gas there are certain procedures that can be done to lower these levels: Filtration, Ventilation, Pressurization, and Sealing. Filtration is not just simply running your air-purifier, in hopes of it removing both the dust and radioactive isotopes. Actually, for another interesting fact, this can actually increase your risk. Those daughter particles can bind to dust particles (attached state) or be free (unattached) and eventually bind to your lungs. Binding to both the dust particle and the inside of your lungs is harder for the radon daughters to do. If they do bind to your lungs you get localized exposure. Thus particles in the attached state are less dangerous than the unattached state. Running your air-purifier and cleaning up the dust does get rid of the dust and even some dust-daughter bound particles. However, after removing the dust, the unattached particles now will not become attached and are thus more dangerous.

Radon gas in dusty indoor areas is actually safer and has less risk than in clean non-dusty areas.(3)

Filtration actually uses a special carbon filter that traps the radon particles and then is flushed out in the outside air. Due to its relatively low efficiency it is best for low radon levels. Ventilation is rather self-explanatory. One needs to make sure that the radon can't collect in one area. By opening up the area you can have fresh air come in and the radon go out, lowering the concentration. Pressurization is a rather interesting approach. The radon is produced in the soil, under one's house. Normally, the gas pressure there rises and this pressure is relieved by it flowing upward into the home. However, pressurization can either work with this effect or against it. Using a fan, one can install what is essentially a straw of suction in a home that diverts, leading outside. As the pressure rises in the soil, the fan sucks and the gas goes up the straw and outside instead of inside the house. Another pressure option is to pressurize the house. This is sometimes not as effective. As the pressure in the soil rises, it is met by the raised pressure of the home itself. Because the pressure of the home is high the gas cannot flow into the high-pressure home. It must be released elsewhere and come out outside of the house. Finally, sealing is not always effective but is great in conjunction with previous methods. One attempt to seal off the home from the ground beneath it. This is done by caulking all the cracks and sealing the concrete and such. However, it is very hard to prevent a gas from entering an area, as it is near-impossible to make it perfectly air-tight. The gas from the soil would then be unable to enter.(1)

This was a long-winded exploration of radon and actually had more random facts than I was expecting. I guess the recommendation after this one is to definitely invest in a radon test. As always, thanks for reading and I hope I was able to keep your attention until the end. Thought I'd cap it off with a picture of FL and expected possible indoor radon levels from the EPA.(4)

Cited:
(1) http://www.radon.com/radon/radon_EPA.html
(2) http://www.radon.com/radon/radon_facts.html
(3) http://www.forensic-applications.com/radon/radon.html
(4) http://www.epa.gov/radon/find-information-about-local-radon-zones-and-radon-program