Radon is the leading cause of lung cancer in Canada for nonsmokers, as the radioactive gas can build up to hazardous levels indoors.
Well shit, I didn’t even know this was a thing…
Health canada says not to use a detector in an unfinished basement since you don’t spend as much time there, but if I ordered a 3 pack wouldn’t it make sense to know if it’s building up there? We still spend hours in it over the month.
Yeah. I wondered about that, too. I don’t spend much time down there… but that’s where my exercise bike is - when I’m breathing the most.
Without a better reason why not, I’d definitely check there too if I was doing that.
I just watched a video of the Holmes on Holmes guy talking about it with people, and they say if you’re on well water and have radon in the house, 100% of the time it’s also in the water.
When you take a shower, it then gasses off and the number can go over 1000.
They say that’s bad (and would be short term) also eating it’s bad.
So ya, I think I’ll get a 3 pack and put one down there
The radon could also go up to the first floor of your house, especially with closed windows. We had a finished basement, and bought a radon detector (radoneye), we found out we had over 1800 Becquerel/m3 downstairs and about 1500 upstairs. It quickly goes away when we opened the windows but also comes back completely within days.
It’s a huge amount so we got the fan installed and we are now at 15 and 0. It costs us about $1500 to install.
For those who get the system installed, please keep in mind that depending on how your house is built, you may need to extract the gas from the two halves of the basement if you have a slab right in the middle used as some sort of foot. You’d have to check the blueprint to know. The installer might have an idea too depending on the construction year of the house.
Just get a plug in one that’s always on. This is the one you want. They used to be the only company that made such a thing; since I bought mine (a 3rd gen) a bunch of years ago, the nonsense companies have also started making them.
That’s a lot more expensive…
3 mail in one’s were I think $110 plus the cost to mail it to California. And you don’t have to buy 3
That’s about $285 CAD after conversion, shipping and duties, and that’s on sale.
Worth it for me. I spend more time in this basement office than anywhere else, by a longshot. I don’t have to wonder. I don’t have to wait while results from a test kit get back. I don’t have to worry about “Eh, I’ll get another test kit … later.” This is how I knew I needed to replace my first active radon fan with a new one: the alarm went off. The detector I have has been clicking along for many years; I have definitely saved money and worry in the long term.
Wait, so the radon is just leaking out of the earth and into your home?
Is this a canada specific issue due to the regional soil composition? Or is this a risk globally?
To my knowledge it’s global, not just specific areas, however the levels vary. In the Midwest (USA) it’s quite common to perform radon tests during a home sale, and homes with basements will frequently have a ‘radon mitigation’ system installed; basically a large fan draws the air out of the space beneath your concrete slab and air-tight plastic is installed in crawl spaces to form a negative pressure so the airborne radon is pulled out before it enters the home, and then exhausted up above the roof line to blow away like other exhaust from HVAC and appliances.
Have a system installed in my home to keep levels as low as possible, even though it tested below the ‘dangerous’ threshold when I purchased. (Better safe than sorry).
Building codes where I am, outside of Chicago, have required all new homes to have passive radon venting installed during construction for at least twenty years. This is a length of PVC pipe that runs from just inside the sump pit in the basement (lowest point) all the way through the house and up out the roof. The sump pit also has a sealed plastic cover bolted on.
It’s then elementary to buy a radon fan and install it in that PVC pipe in the attic, making it an active system. You want to have less than 4pCi/l (picocuries per liter) radiation. My basement office used to be like 23pCi/l. After installing a fan (and then later replacing it when the first one stopped doing its job), it’s at 1.6pCi/l.
Most of the radon tests out there are “single use,” where you set the test down, wait for some period of time, send it off to be analyzed. These are like US$20 or US$30. One company makes a plug-in detector that runs all the time, and alarms when it’s over 4pCi/l. It’s about US$130, and worth every penny if you have a finished basement and anyone spends time in it.
Edit: A quick look at Amazon shows that the garbage companies are now making always on radon detectors. This is new since I bought mine like five or six years ago. You want a SafetySiren brand, and the newest model is now US$180 on Amazon.
Yeah “safe than sorry” is definitely the better choice for an invisible cancer gas, yikes
Having kids made it a no-brainer
It is not canada specific. There are maps online like https://radonmap.com/ found another one here https://radonkit.ca/blog/radon-gas-map-for-canada-potential-radon-levels-across-canada/
I didn’t think my area was high but all the maps I find say it is. Maybe time for a test…
Edit: fixed link.
100% recommend a professional test and not just disposable things. They’ll set up a few machines on tripods for a few days and you’ll get to see highs/lows in different rooms instead of just a yes/no or a peak value. Can really help make a good decision about mitigation
I work for a health charity that does some work in the radon field. I won’t rehash what others have said other than it’s legit and relatively unknown. The only thing I’ll add is that modern home construction makes it worse since buildings are much more sealed than they used to be which causes the radon to build up instead of escaping into the surrounding atmosphere.
Some (maybe all at this point) provincial building codes now require a rough in pipe opening in your foundation so you can install a mitigation system if levels become a problem in your house.
Cool, so you work with this. How dense is radon compared to open air? Is it light enough to pool on the ceiling? Or is it mixed enough in density to be present in the entire column? Im assuming its not too heavy since it rises from the soil.
Is this something that regular air circulation makes trivial?
Radon is denser, it gets sucked into your house because of the pressure difference. Since it is denser it will pool in the lower levels so the guidelines say to test the lowest floor where you spend a lot of time. If there’s not high amounts of radon in that location it won’t be in the upper floors.
Air circulation internally should cause the amount to average across your entire house. And internal to external ventilation is how you get it to dissipate. That’s why the guideline is to test for at least 3 months over the winter when houses are more sealed up. That way you get the worst case result and over the summer it would probably be less.
Radon is dangerous because it’s radioactive with a half life of 3 days which is a very human timescale compared to some other radioactive particles and if a radon particle happens to be inside your lungs when it does decay it will damage your lung tissue and long term repeated exposure will put you at greater risk of lung cancer.
Radon is just regular air that gets irradiated by uranium ore in the soil. It doesn’t settle in your house, the basement just tends to have less airflow.
Yep, exactly.
I found this article that explains it well.
Radon gas can be found throughout the United States – literally from coast to coast. In fact, there is radon in every single state, although at different levels and not all amounts are considered dangerous.
Not to get too complicated, but radon gas is a byproduct of the element radium which ultimately comes from uranium. According to a report by the U.S. Geological Survey, uranium is the parent element and is found deep within the earth’s crust. It’s billions of years old. As time passes, it breaks down forming radium, the daughter element. When solid radium decays, it releases radon gas. All three are radioactive substances.
The reason radon gas is found everywhere is because uranium is everywhere – all rocks are composed of at least a trace amount of it. Over time, the rocks beneath the earth’s surface break down and turn into soil. So, if the deep rocks in the area contain uranium, it stands to reason that the soil at the surface will too.
The U.S. Geological Survey explains that radon moves easily and quickly through porous soils, like sand and gravel, and slower through more solid soils, clay being one such example. Moisture has a lot to do with this. In wet soil, like clay, it’s harder for the radon to permeate it, so the radon often becomes trapped and deteriorates before it reaches the surface. In dry, porous soils, radon gas is able to quickly escape into the air.
It can happen everywhere, but there is at least one case in Canada where the radon is coming from uranium mine tailings rather than just being there naturally. It’s been in the news in northeastern Ontario on and off for months now.
Most parts of eastern Canada have comparatively high levels of Uranium in the ground - the radioactive decay process turns Uranium into Radon, which finds its way into buildings, and collects in basements because it’s heavier than air. It’s been made worse by the whole “R2000” building standard which means homes are practically air tight.
The worst part is that federal and provincial building codes don’t make the installation of radon remediation equipment standard – and it costs practically nothing to install at construction time – whereas cutting trenches in your foundation to install PVC pipe is extraordinarily disruptive.
Spend the money on a digital monitor. We had one of the pucks sent by Health Canada, found out our basement had extreme levels (as high as 600-900 Bqm^3). The digital monitor shows the big trends. We had some equipment installed to remediate it, so it’s better… But we’ll be doing more work next year to try to reduce it even further.
The only thing worse than finding out how bad it was, was not knowing about it for 10+ years. This whole thing has likely reduced the life expectancy of my family.
