State RADON #

Yes, radon is a very real problem. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says that Radon is the second leading cause of lung cancer deaths in the US after smoking. The good news is that your house can be fixed.

DID YOU KNOW... Only smoking causes more lung cancer deaths that radon, and if your home has high radon levels and you smoke than your risk of lung cancer is especially high. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the American Lung Association both agree that long term exposure to elevated levels of radon pose a significant health risk to you and your family. Since radon is a colorless, odorless, and tasteless gas, the only way to determine if radon is in your home is by performing a simple and affordable test.

Radon is naturally occurring radioactive gas that is produced by the breakdown of uranium in soil, rock, and water. Air pressure inside your home is usually lower than the pressure in the soil around your home's foundation. Because of this difference in pressure, your house acts like a vacuum, drawing radon in through foundation cracks and other openings. Your home then traps the radon inside, where it can build up. Any home can have a radon problem. This means old or new, well sealed or drafty, and with or without basements.

Yes, you may have been living in a high radon environment for a long time but just like smoking tobacco the sooner you stop the better. Radon, like smoking, shows it effects over a period of many years. If you quit living in a high radon environment you reduce your risk of lung cancer. If you don't want to fix your home for yourself, do it for the children. The US Environmental Protection Agency recommends that you fix your home if your radon level is 4.0 pCi/L (Pico Curies) or higher.

The short term radon test must remain in the home for a minimum period of 48 hours. The ion chambers are then returned to our office and analyzed. Your results will be available the same day that the ion chambers are retrieved from your home. When testing is performed for Real Estate transactions, fast accurate results are required to avoid delays in the sales process. All other passive radon measurement devices must be shipped to a lab, often half way across the country, to be analyzed. This means that everything stops on weekends and holidays and it isn't unusual for 3 to 4 days to go by waiting for a result.

We perform all of our radon testing following the EPA's protocol for Real Estate Transactions. Two monitors are deployed at the same time and the results are compared and averaged to calculate the radon level of your home.

The EPA document A Citizen's Guide To Radon (Third Edition) provides the basic information everyone should know about Radon. For more information on how to reduce your radon health risk, call your state radon office for copies of these guides:

• Home Buyer's and Seller's Guide to Radon
• Radon: A Physician's Guide
• Consumer's Guide to Radon Reduction
• Other Radon-specific publications are located at: www.epa.gov/iaq/radon/pubs/index.html
• Other Indoor Air Quality-specific publications are located at: www.epa.gov/iaq/pubs/index.html

Another great site for additional information is: www.howstuffworks.com/radon.htm

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