Whether you’ve heard about radon from a local health fair, public education program, or a contractor, the impacts that radon can have on your overall health and wellness can be frightening. But is it really that bad? Do you really need to consider having remediation done for your home or business? What happens if you ignore it? In this article, we’ll go through the impact that radon gas has on your Rochester home, the effects it can have on your health, where it comes from, and what to do to avoid excessive exposure.
The Impact of Radon on Your Health and Wellness
What Is Radon?
Radon is a naturally occurring radioactive gas that forms when uranium decays. During this process, naturally occurring uranium ore in the soil breaks down over time. It first decays into radium ore, and then the radium ore decays into radon gas. Because it’s a gas, it can infiltrate the air and water, including the air around you, but like many things in nature, it’s not harmful in very small doses.
In the outdoors and fresh air, the radon gas naturally disperses, causing no home. However, in a home that has been well-sealed to improve energy efficiency, radon can build up in elevated levels. You can’t smell, see, feel, or sense it, making it imperceptible without proper testing equipment. However, that doesn’t mean that it can’t cause considerable damage, most specifically to respiratory health.
How Does Radon Impact Your Health?
Radon is the highest cause of lung cancer after smoking, killing about 21,000 people every year according to the Centers for Disease Control. It takes between 5-25 years to develop after exposure to excessive radon gas. If you smoke and are in an area that is high in radon gas, you have a remarkably high chance of getting lung cancer. It’s also been linked to some other cancers, including leukemia in children, but the evidence in those links is not as clear as it is for lung cancer.
Children are at an especially elevated risk of complications from radon gas. They have a faster metabolism, causing faster respiration rates and higher exposure. They also have lungs that are still developing, with a different size and shape than adult lungs. These two factors increase radon dosage, and it’s estimated that children have double the risk of lung cancer compared to adults exposed in the same area. Radon can also damage lung tissues, causing significant health issues.
How Do You Know If Your Home Has High Radon Levels?
There are a range of easy-to-use tests that you can undertake to check your home’s radon levels. These include short-term tests that take a few days to tests that take between three months to a year to complete for a more in-depth look at your home’s radon levels through various times of the year. However, if you’re concerned about radon levels in your home or have a family history of lung cancer, you may want to consider professional testing.
In these cases, a professional test company will place equipment to monitor your home’s radon levels more exactly so that you can determine whether your home has high radon levels above 4.0 picocuries per liter, moderate levels between 2-4 picocuries per liter, or low levels below 1.9 picocuries per liter. With this information available, you can determine how to act to protect your health.
What Can You Do to Limit Exposure to Radon?
If you feel that your home’s radon levels are too high for comfort, you can have a professional company like Storm Basement Waterproofing in Rochester install a radon gas remediation system to reduce radon exposure in your home. The type of system that you have installed will depend on your home’s design. In most radon retrofit situations, the soil underneath your home or your basement floor will be sealed, and a fan will vent the radon gas from beneath your foundation.
If you have a moderate level of radon, you can take other actions, such as having cracks in your foundation floor and walls sealed with compounds designed for this purpose, increasing airflow within your home by opening windows, or similar approaches that limits how much radon gas can enter your home.
At Storm Basement Waterproofing, we provide a range of foundation sealing options for your Rochester home to both waterproof it as well as reduce your radon gas exposure. If you have concerns about moderate radon gas levels in your Rochester home, we’d be happy to help you find the right solution for your needs. Please reach out today for more information on our foundation repair and sealing services.
