The Ghost of Radon

Halloween is over, right? We’re safe now—all the ghosts are on holiday until next October. But what if I told you that as the colder weather comes and we spend more time indoors with our windows shut tight for longer and longer, we’re in fact, creating the perfect conditions for a different kind of not-so-friendly invisible presence in our homes? Lurking in our basements, sneaking in through the cracks of our foundations, wafting up undetected from our sump pumps, and invading the air we breathe is something not just spooky, but potentially very hazardous to our health.

Yes, I’m referring to radon as the not-so-friendly ghost who can come uninvited into our homes.

Inhaling air with high concentrations of radon gas is the first leading cause of lung cancer in Canadians who don’t smoke. Imagine: your whole life you’ve staved off the urge to smoke cigarettes, recently started walking three times a week for exercise, and reduced your red meat intake, all to be the healthiest version of you. Then you go to your doctor’s and find out that you’re the “one” in the one in ten chance of non-smokers getting lung cancer from long-term exposure to radon gas—something that is completely preventable by testing your home for radon. If that isn’t scary enough, if you’re someone who smokes, you have a one in three chance of getting lung cancer if you’re exposed to radon at high concentrations in the long term.

Radon is measured in a unit of becquerels per metre cubed (Bq/ m3). Anything under 200 Bq/m3 is considered safe enough. However, 400 Bq/m3 is equivalent to smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. One woman from Ottawa, a non-smoker who developed lung cancer, realized that for five years her home had 3,250 Bq/m3, a concentration 20 times Health Canada’s guidelines.

According to a study conducted by Health Canada in 2012, over 12% of homes in the Thunder Bay District have high radon levels, compared to the national average of 7%. In 2015 the Thunder Bay District Health Unit found that on average, 16% of homes in our community have radon levels with a concentration of 200Bq/m3 or higher.

Thankfully, you don’t need to be an expert in witchcraft to expel this entity from your home. The first thing to do is test, using a certified long-term radon detector. DIY tests are available from EcoSuperior, and Thunder Bay is also served by four radon mitigation specialists who can do the testing for you (see our website for details on both options). Then, fixes like getting a sump pump cover and sealing basement windows are among the easier solutions.

This November, take action on radon, so that we don’t let anything invisible, scary, and spooky linger in our house once Halloween is done.

Visit ecosuperior.org/radon for more information. EcoSuperior’s Radon Outreach work is made possible with support by Health Canada.