Your home is your safe place, your space away from the world, where you feel most comfortable. Your family, the most important people to you, live in your home, too, and the home is their safe space as well. But what if your home wasn’t safe? What if there was something in your home posing a threat, something you couldn’t see or easily detect? If radon is present in your home, it could be putting you and your family at risk.
What is radon, first of all? Radon is an colorless, odorless, and radioactive noble gas. When asking, what is radon, it is important to ask what radon can DO. The presence of radon in a home can be so dangerous simply because so many people don’t know that it’s there. Radon testing, however, can help to mitigate this risk.
It’s important to know about the presence of radon, because radon is so dangerous. Radon is actually the second leading cause of lung cancer, according to The Surgeon General. The Environmental Protection Agency has released information showing that up to 20,000 deaths yearly are caused by radon poisoning. And radon is not nearly as uncommon as you or I might initially think. 1 in 3 homes across multiple states were shown to have elevated levels of radon, and about 1 in 15 homes nationally have radon levels that are above EPA standards.
Fortunately, residential radon testing is a viable option for most homes. There are different types of radon mitigation services, from short term detectors that measure radon levels for up to 90 days, to more long term solutions that can determine average radon concentration after 90 days. Radon ventilation fans can also prove incredibly effective, lowering radon levels by half simply through what is called a passive system of mitigation. If radon levels are lowered in homes to meet EPA standards, lung cancer rates could drop by up to 4%, approximately 5,000 less deaths than previously anticipated.
What is radon? Radon is a gas that has the potential to cause great harm, but its damage is also possible to be mitigated and lessened.