It’s Easy to Protect Your Family from Radon – Free Radon Testing for a Healthy Home

By: Lynne Tarbutton, R.S.

A healthy diet, sunscreen, routine exercise.  There are many actions that we can take to stay healthy.  Some of them, like cutting back on sweets and carefree days under the sun, require a little bit of sacrifice.  Others, like quitting smoking, can require considerable effort.  But there’s one action we can take to help protect our health that requires very little effort or sacrifice: radon testing. 

Radon exposure kills an estimated 20,000 people in the U.S. each year and is a significant risk in the Western Upper Peninsula where 10% of the homes tested in Houghton and Gogebic Counties have elevated radon levels.  About 4% of the homes tested in Baraga, Keweenaw, and Ontonagon Counties were also found to have elevated radon levels.    The easily preventable health risk of living with prolonged radon exposure can be dramatically reduced by using a free radon test kit and, if necessary, inexpensive home repair. 

Radon is a naturally occurring, radioactive gas that can accumulate in your home and can cause lung cancer in you or your children.  Radon comes from the bedrock and soil surrounding homes and can enter through cracks and openings in the foundation.   Because you can’t see or smell radon, people tend to downplay the health effects and ignore the possibility that there might be a lung cancer risk in their own homes.

The only way to know if you and your family are at risk for radon exposure is to test your home.  Conducting a radon test is as easy as opening a package, placing the detector in a designated area, and after a set number of days, sending the detector back to the lab for analysis.  Free test kits are available at every health department office.  If your home does have an elevated level of radon, a qualified contactor can make repairs to solve the problem and protect your family.  There are several proven methods to reduce radon in homes, but the one primarily used is a vent pipe and a fan which pulls radon from beneath the house and vents it to the outside.   

The health department encourages new home builders to use radon-resistant construction techniques when designing and building new homes in the Western Upper Peninsula.  With the prevalence of radon in our local soils, building radon-resistant new houses is just good planning.  Radon-resistant construction techniques help block radon from entering the home and are more cost-effective to include while building a home, rather than installing a radon reduction system in an existing home. 

The Western U.P. District Health Department urges residents of our community to take action this January – National Radon Action Month – by testing your home for radon.  For more information about radon, obtaining a free radon test kit, radon mitigation, and radon-resistant new home construction, contact the health department at 906-492-7382 or visit our Web site at www.wupdhd.org.

Western U.P. District Health Department provides public health services to residents in Houghton, Keweenaw, Baraga, Ontonagon, and Gogebic counties.  In addition, its Superior Home Health and Hospice Division provides skilled home nursing and hospice services in the five counties.  Western U.P District Health Department has offices in Hancock, L’Anse, Ontonagon and Bessemer.

For more information please visit: http://www.epa.gov/radon/

Editor’s Note: Lynne Tarbutton, is the Environment Health Division Director of the Western U.P. District Health Department.