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Why do houses have high radon problems?
The flow of radon from the ground
into a building differs from site to site, thus from building to building, but that
is not the only reason.
A normal modern house will trap Radon because we want
modern houses to minimize their leakiness of inside warm air to the outside cold
environment, or in the summer the opposite. This thermal separation and insulation
process has made our houses to trap gasses longer inside the house resulting in higher
concentration of any poisonous gas released in our homes, including Radon.
How
does radon affect our health?
Once Radon has escaped the rocks or soil under
the building and entered your home, it continuous to decay through a radioactive
sequence of metallic elements: Polonium-218, Lead-214, Bismuth-214 and Polonium-214
and Lead-210 in the next 2 hours or so after it has decayed to Radon. These so called
Radon Decay Products (RDP's) are swept up by tiny solid particles in the air, inhaled
via normal breathing and tend to stick in a person's lungs where the decay continuous
to cause emissions of high energy alpha particles from the Polonium elements in the
sequence. These alpha particles can cause lung tissue damage. Therefore high levels
of RDP's are a health hazard in your home and direct measurements of the RDP concentration
can be made via special instruments. Such instruments are also named "Working
Level Meters" because they use a unit that is called the "Working Level"
in order to indicate the level of health risk a person is exposed to which used to
be in mines in a "working" environment (regulated by OSHA) . (For an example
of an instrument see our description of possible tests elsewhere). The Radon concentration,
which is measurable via other instruments based on physical (not chemical- because
radon is inert) methods, is chosen as a good tell tale signal of the RDP-concentrations
in a home (For an example see our description of possible tests elsewhere). Therefore
supported by scientific studies, the EPA has set a threshold for the Radon concentration
above which an individual has an increased risk for lung cancer over a lifetime
based on the total acquired radiative dose a person accumulates from the decaying
RDP's over this time. This EPA threshold concentration for Radon is 4.0 pCi/L.
Thus
because Radon is radioactive, a high concentration of Radon gas in your home results
in an increased risk for developing lung cancer over a lifetime by the decay elements
(RDP's) of Radon.