Have you already done local radon testing in your home, or are you still planning to do so? How can you keep your home thoroughly safe if you keep postponing testing for radon?
Even if you install several burglar alarms and other safety devices in and around your home, they are not enough to make your home totally safe from all harmful things. Without radon gas testing, you’ll never know if this deadly radioactive gas is present in your home. The estimate is that about 1 in 15 homes in the United States have radon levels at or above the EPA action level.
You’re lucky if your home doesn’t have high levels of radon. Otherwise, you need to take action and do it as soon as possible to ensure your family’s safety from this invisible killer.
What Is Radon
First, you need to understand what this deadly gas really is. This colorless, tasteless, and odorless hazardous gas naturally occurs from the breakdown of radioactive metals found in rocks, groundwater, and soil, such as radium, thorium, and uranium.
If radon is present in the rocks or soil outside your home, it can enter your house by seeping through cracks and gaps in walls. Once it happens, you and your family can have constant exposure to this deadly gas. An accumulation of radon gas can pose a significant danger to your health because breathing in radon-contaminated air can cause fatal illnesses.
What Can Radon Do to Your Health
If you don’t know the seriousness of this issue, you’ll be surprised that as many as 20,000 lung cancer deaths per year are due to radon contamination, as estimated by the U.S. Surgeon General’s Office and Environmental Protection Agency. Your risk of contracting lung cancer increases by 16% per every 100 Bq/m of long-term average radon concentration.
Once a person continuously inhales the fine, radioactive particles of radon, it potentially damages the lungs. Even with low levels of this hazardous gas, it can be a significant risk to your health if exposed to it long-term. That’s why you need to take immediate action if you have a radon problem in your home.
Take note, though, that because radon is a naturally occurring gas from the earth, it may be impossible to eliminate it entirely from the air. However, even if you can’t lessen its levels to zero, you can reduce its presence to a safer level through radon mitigation.
What You Can Do About It
Is your home in a high radon potential area? Then you are in danger of having this invisible yet extremely harmful gas indoors. However, even if you’re not in a high radon zone, you still need to have local radon testing done to ensure that your family’s health is not at risk.
While it’s impossible to avoid exposure to this deadly gas – especially if you’re in a high radon potential zone – the best thing you can do is reduce its levels inside your home to a low and safer number.
To prevent high radon levels from posing a significant risk to your family’s health, you can do the following to protect your home:
Check For Radon Potential
The first approach you can take is to check if your city has radon potential. Some zones have elevated indoor radon levels, and you can find out if your home is in such an area by checking the radon zone map shown by the EPA on their website.
Local Radon Testing
Even if your home isn’t in a high radon area, you should do local radon testing to find out if it has radon levels of 4 pCi/L or higher. If your house has high levels of radon, then you should immediately do the next step.
Get Help From the Experts
You shouldn’t treat the issue lightly if your home has high radon levels. Seeking the help of professionals who can mitigate the radon in your home can help your family avoid radon exposure.
Take Action Before It’s Too Late
Don’t wait until it’s too late. Radon abatement and mitigation should be your priority to keep your family safe from this deadly gas. The first step you should take is radon testing Aurora CO and other cities offer, so you can start mitigating radon in your home as soon as possible.