What is Radon Gas?

It's sometimes difficult to grasp the threat of radon gas because it's invisible.  The EPA even came upon this domestic phenomenon rather by accident.  But, once they were aware of it, they quickly determined that it's effects on the human body were potentially very serious.  So, what is radon?

By scientific description...  it's a gas that's created by the decay of Uranium in the soil.  Uranium 238 decays in several stages over a very long time - each stage resulting in the creation of a new substance.  In nearly the last of these stages we find Radon 222, the only form emitted as a gas.

The residential radon concern was started at a nuclear facility in 1984.  One of the workers at the facility kept triggering the radiation detector at the front gate... on the way into work.  After all the scanning equipment was checked and re-checked for error, officials took radiation readings at this man's house.  They found result numbers equivalent to tens to tens of thousands of hospital x-rays, later linked to uranium in the soil beneath his house.

  As an example, if a house tests at 4pCi/l  (picoCuries/liter), this is roughly equivalent in life-long health risk to modest cigarette smoking.  This is an oversimplification, of course, but it provides a frame of reference.  And, if individuals in the house are already smokers, the effects are much more than the sum of the two factors.  Smokers could suffer many more times greater adverse health effects than from just smoking.