Happy New Year from Air Health Our health. I can’t believe it’s 2024. This blog and podcast launched in 2020 in the middle of a pandemic, and now I have been able to attend church unmasked and enjoy singing in a large group indoors, which is not something I could have conceived when this project began. I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season and are looking forward to 2024
Today’s post is to wish you Happy New Year and to highlight the important issue of radon. You may know if you have been following this blog and podcast that January is Radon Action Month. It is important to understand the risk of radon in your home, school and workplace and at a minimum to make sure that your home has been tested if appropriate.
Radon is actually the leading natural environmental cause of deaths from lung cancer, and in the United States, we lose around 21,000 people to lung cancer caused by radon each year.
So what is radon? It is naturally occurring in the environment, Radon-222 is the decay product of radium-226. Both of these are part of the long decay chain for uranium-238. Since uranium is present pretty much throughout the earth’s crust, so are radium 226 and radon-222. Radon is emitted as an invisible odorless gas from soils and rocks that are in the ground underneath buildings. It gets into buildings through cracks and gaps and can then be trapped there in very high concentrations. The radioactive decay particles from radon can cause a great deal of damage when inhaled, damaging DNA which can lead to cancer over time. The only way to know if there are high levels in your building is to actually test the building that you are in. There can be very high levels in one house and a neighboring house can have very low levels. Assuming that where you live on average radon is low does not mean that the radon is low in your individual building.
As in everything with air quality there are massive equity issues, since lower income and historically disadvantaged communities including households of color are less likely to have their homes tested for radon than others, whether due to a lack of awareness, a lack of ownership of the home, or an inability to pay for testing and mitigation.
Also as in everything related to breathing healthy air, the benefits of fixing indoor radon are extremely cost-effective with a high return on investment. It’s estimated that for $11 we spend on testing and repairing to decrease radon levels in the indoor environment, we avoid $20 in healthcare expenditures.
There is now a National Radon Action Plan trying to address the health toll of radon. You can imagine that this involves multiple stakeholders. Honestly, the first time I really thought seriously about radon was when I was buying a house and I had already been trained as a Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine physician. That’s why I’ve tried to highlight a variety of voices about this issue, including that of Will Graff, who is a home inspector who lost his never-smoking mother to lung cancer that was likely caused by radon.
The issue of radon is one that teaches a great deal about the many issues about the toll of unhealthy air. We have stories like Will’s, where the fact that the air we breathe can hold unseen toxins can lead to premature death. It also teaches us how careful science is very important to establish causes of death and disease and how bad science can obscure the facts. Cheap and quick studies often miss what careful science can reveal, as I reviewed with Prof Fields in Season One of the podcast. This is also obviously a public health issue, and through the pandemic we have all become aware of the importance of communicating nuanced public health issues well. We also saw how the toll of unhealthy air falls disproportionately on historically disadvantaged communities. I focused on the public health and equity issues related to radon during the second season of he podcast, in the “Raising Radon Awareness” episode as well as in a spanish language episode on radon.
In short, it does not take a lot of time to be sure your home has low radon levels. We spend a lot of time indoors in January, and now is a good time to take action.
TLDR= Test your home for radon!
To Do:
– Ensure your home is tested for radon– test every 2-5 years if you have not mitigated for radon and after home upgrades. More information here
– Watch and share Mateo’s video from Season Two of the podcast educating about the importance of radon testing and action. Listen to that episode for more about public health and equity issues around radon.
– The EPA estimates around 1 in 5 schools may have elevated radon levels in at least one frequently-occupied room. Find out if your child’s school has been tested for radon and whether it has been mitigated, particularly if close to or over the EPA action level of 4.0 pCi/L
– If you are a health professional, learn more about patient outreach with this guide to radon.
– For more on the science of radon and how we know it causes cancer, listen to the podcast episode with Professor Bill Fields.
– To hear a personal story about someone affected by radon, listen to the podcast with the home inspector Will Graff from Season One.
– Learn more about the Northwest Radon Coalition here, and consider a donation to the American Lung Association here.
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