Radon, a threat no one seems to talk about

[Xyphien]

I've personally never heard of Radon, nor has any of my friends. My buddy, who's a lot older than I am said he spent 20 years installing radon vents and then when I put a contract on a home to make sure to get it checked out. What most people don't know is Radon is one of the largest killers every year and the second leading cause of lung cancer in the world under smoking. It kills over 20k people every year, this is something most people don't even know about. Radon is a radio active gas that's naturally produced by the earth and comes up from the ground, and anything higher than 4.0 is toxic to us and can lead to death and or lung cancer. In the US most states in the norther half of the US are in a Zone 1 area, meaning it's higher than 4.0. I just had a house I put a contract in run a test and it came back that on average it was 10.2 and a max of 18.5 over the course of 2 days! This is significantly higher than 4.0 toxicity. If we didn't know about this, we would have bought the house, moved in and wouldn't have ever known. It's not enforced in the US, and it's something you have to actually request when you get your home inspection else they simply won't do it. The craziest thing, the fix is only around $1,500 to literally save your life. They simply install a fan under your house that funnels and pushes the radon around your house so there's no build up where you live.

To explain how dangerous radon is other than the statistics I pushed out, we didn't even know about Radon until the 90s. Yes, 1990s! That's my generation. Someone went to work at a power plant and they set off the radio active alarms. They had so much radio activity coming off of them they shut down the powerplant. Turns out his house had a massive built up amount of radon in it, it actually set off the alarms at a POWER PLANT.

The map below shows radon based on zones. Zone 1 is dangerous and is on average higher than 4.0 in the area. Zone2 is from 2.0 -4.0 on average which should still have the fan placed in your home, and zone 3 is the safest areas which on average have less than 2.0.

 

[ZandraJoi]

RE: Radon, a threat no one seems to talk about

If I'm guessing correctly, our smoke alarms are also radon detectors. You can also buy radon detectors by themselves. I had researched this myself years ago. I'm very pro-active in my healthcare & just because it is natural (radon), does not mean it won't harm us.

Anybody here have a radon detector?

 

[TopSilver]

RE: Radon, a threat no one seems to talk about

Never knew there were Radon detectors. Some of those states in red make me wonder as well. I can see New York being a hugely radon active area as well as certain areas I wouldn't suspect were not like Washington state.

 

[Xyphien]

RE: Radon, a threat no one seems to talk about

If I'm guessing correctly, our smoke alarms are also radon detectors. You can also buy radon detectors by themselves. I had researched this myself years ago. I'm very pro-active in my healthcare & just because it is natural (radon), does not mean it won't harm us.
Anybody here have a radon detector?

I do not have a radon detector, but I am about to get an entire radon system installed into my house. Which is pretty much a fan that circulates the radon that seeps through the floor of the house and pushes it out of the roof of the house so it doesn't get caught inside of your house.

 

[Jason Y]

RE: Radon, a threat no one seems to talk about

Me or my family have never bothered to get it checked out.  Nonetheless, I don't see massive incidences of cancer etc. in my home - unless it was self-inflicted.   Anyway, though, people should check for Radon.