Radon Gas

Thanks for the further replies but I decided to settle here on my beloved Long Island instead.

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" Not all who wander are lost" J.R. Tolkin

I know a lady who smoked several packs of cigarettes a day who got all concerned about radon , testing for it and "fixing " the problem. Not smoking would have been of more benefit to decrease her cancer risk.

In an older home I would place plastic in the crawl space and run a collection tube under the plastic to vent to the outside. No need to hire a contractor.

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Health Care is vital to all of us some of the time but Public Health is vital to all of us all of the time. C. Everett Koop US Surgean General 1981-1989.

Couple of clarifications to some info. posted. Radon was a recognized hazard well before the Limerick Nuclear plant incident. By then safe levels of exposure were established by the US and the Europeans. I had family working in the plant at the time, and the engineers found it pretty funny that the press was running in circles declaring that Radon was "discovered" for the first time at Limerick. Lots of dead Uranium miners in the southwest would probably disagree. Second, the much missed drafty old houses of "back in the day" made for some mighty fine radon sucking machines. Leaky walls, windows and doors, stone foundations and a nice "chimney effect" really can crank up the numbers. I built many new homes in an area with fairly high readings. Often in neighborhoods where the adjacent homes were full of the ugly retrofitted mitigation systems. By using $50 worth of materials to build a passive, sub-slab collection plenum and a vent from there through the roof, the highest reading ever in one of my places was 2 pc/l.

You would be amazed at, in many cases, how much of that good clean air is being evacuated from cracks and seams in cellar walls and floors, and dragging lots of Radon in with it. I have driven pc/l levels down dramatically by sealing all those cracks with urethane caulk.

A few years back, I dug down into some of the data and supporting tests. The disease and deaths attributed are primarily due to extrapolation of figures. If you search for DIRECT CAUSE deaths, you won't find more than a dozen, if any. (At least with asbestos, there are documented deaths in miners.) Further, the figures commonly cited have been puffed up by claiming radon was a contributing factor in the death of a percentage of smokers - without any method of verifying that.

I give you a quote from this site:
http://www.epa.gov/radiation/radionuclides/radon.html

"Radon is a noble gas, which means it is basically inert (does not combine with other chemicals). Radon is a heavy gas and tends to collect in basements or other low places in housing. It has no color, odor, or taste. Radon-222 is produced by the decay of radium, has a half-life of 3.8 days, and emits an alpha particle as it decays to polonium-218, and eventually to stable lead. Radon-220, is the decay product of thorium – it is sometimes called thoron, has a half-life of 54.5 seconds and emits an alpha particle in its decay to polonium-216."

In essence, the only danger is from the decay process, when an alpha particle is released.

How dangerous is alpha particle exposure?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3759459

"In 14 yr of continuous study, from 1970 to 1983, age-adjusted mortality rates were found to be 2.7 per 10(5) living persons of all ages in the high background area, and 2.9 per 10(5) living persons in the control area."

Translated:
10(5) is 100,000
Out of 100,000 people 2.7 died of lung cancer in the high dose area, and in the control area with LESS radon, 2.9 died of lung cancer - unless I am reading that wrong, those with more radon fared BETTER. However, I think they may have figures reversed in the abstract. The real issue is the extremely small difference of 2 people in 1,000,000.

Various scientists are at odds with each other as to the effects of low dose radiation from alpha particles. Some suggest a linear correlation to exposure, some an exponential. The following pdf is a sample of the thought:

http://www.isca.in/IJBS/Archive/v2i2...S-2012-214.pdf

So what is the relative exposure to radiation in comparison to radon?

A becquerel is one atomic decay per second.
A home may have radon equivalent to 30,000 becquerel - the same as released by 1 household smoke detector with americium.
The human body itself emits on average around 7,000 becquerels
If you have injested or been injected with a radioisotope for medical diagnosis, that has around 70,000,000 becquerel

In my estimation, the total mortality from the manufacture, transportation, and installation of home radon reduction systems, once you include increased time in traffic and accidents, on-site accidents, insect bites and septic scratches installing in crawl spaces, is GREATER than the saving of life from reduced cancer risk. When you add in the increased carbon emissions by coal burning plants providing constant power to run the radon removal fans, and the increased power use from the exchange of tempered air for outside air, radon removal is a contributor to greenhouse gasses and mortality from "global warming" if you believe in that.

I do NOT say that radon should be completely dismissed. It IS a danger to miners, granite workers, and workers in some other industries. In the home, however, radon remediation is overkill and the creator of a wasteful industry that at best should be 1/10th the current size.

Further... as radiation expose and damage tends to be cumulative, the chance of non-smoking childless couples over about age 30 ever being affected by radon border on non-existent.

A good read - thanks Harry

Nail on the head Harry. Here in eastern PA. there are many homes that need/needed mitigation. That said, you are probably correct that there are also an additional 10X that number that ended up being "cured" of a problem that didn't exist in the first place. From my readings, back when the problem was "discovered" and it became apparent that most of this region was located on the "Reading Prong" of high Radon potential rock, it turned into a typical cluster created by the feds. The claim is that the EPA was, as typical, unwilling to consider that this issue may of been discovered and addressed elsewhere, ignored a long history of European research into the matter, and their efforts at mitigation and exposure level requirements for residential occupancies. The feds. turned to information available from uranium miner exposure in the southwest and then developed the standard 4pc/l level. Problem is that that extremely low value is somewhere between 33 to 266% lower than the levels allowed in other countries. That is, IMHO how this whole thing became a pretty lucrative industry.
Radon is an issue, but not anywhere near the issue that we have been mislead to believe that it is.