MYTH: My new home is new so I don’t have a radon problem.
FACT: This is simply not true. New homes can have just as much radon inside as an older home and sometimes even more depending on how tight the house is built.
MYTH: My neighbor doesn’t have high radon levels so my house won’t either.
FACT: This is also not true. Your home could have twice as much radon as your neighbors home. This depends on if your house has a crawlspace, how tight it is, cracks in the floor, open sump lids etc., or just the geology under your structure.
MYTH: Radon isn’t really harmful. I’ve lived here for 25 years and don’t have any health problems.
FACT: Radon related lung cancer symptoms may not manifest themselves until five years or more after you contracted the disease. The truth is, is that radon is the leading cause of lung cancer in non-smokers. Only people that smoke have a higher risk of getting lung cancer. You will reduce the risk of lung cancer when you reduce the radon levels, even if you have lived with an elevated radon level for a long time. 21,000 deaths in the United States and 170,000 deaths worldwide are attributed to radon gas every year!
MYTH: Radon gas is eliminated when you mitigate.
FACT: Radon gas is naturally occurring and is only redirected from your home by mitigation. Mitigation reduces the amount that accumulates inside your dwelling, but never eliminates it. That’s why it is important to re-test every 2-3 years.
MYTH: Radon mitigation systems cost too much and will be costly to operate.
FACT: The average mitigation system is installed for under $1500.00 and operating cost estimated at approximately $60.00 annually to effectively reduce the levels of radon in your home. The national average life of a radon mitigation fan is 11 years and many last 15-20 years.
MYTH: My home doesn’t have a basement, so I won’t have a problem.
FACT: The style of the home has very little to do with radon entry. Whether your house is a (ranch, 2 story, walkout, split level, quad level, tri-level, or slab on grade), all structures have negative pressures in the lower half of the building, no matter how they are built or designed. No particular style of home is more likely to have a radon problem; including old homes, new homes, drafty homes, insulated homes, homes with basements, or homes without basements.
MYTH: My realtor says there’s no radon in my area.
FACT: Some areas of the country have been shown to have lower radon levels on average than others, but serious problems have been found in every state and in many areas that used to be considered low risk.
MYTH: My neighbor’s home tested fine, so I must be safe also!
FACT: You should never rely on your neighbor’s radon results as a comparison to yours. Even identical homes in the same development, next door to each other, built at the same time by the same builder can be 100 times higher or lower than your house. There can even be a huge difference from one side of a duplex or attached town home to the other.
MYTH: The house being tested was closed up or vacant for a long time, so the reading is higher than normal.
FACT: Sorry, that is incorrect for two reasons: First, radon is radioactive (otherwise we wouldn’t be having this conversation), which means that it is breaking down continuously. If you had a bottle containing one pound of radon, in 82 (3.8 days) half of it is gone, transformed into other elements-bismuth, polonium, and lead. Another 82 hours and you’re down to only ¼ pound of radon & so on.
FACT: Radon is natural, but houses aren’t; they are man-made and trap the radon gas in the home, then draw it in from the surrounding soil. Just F.Y.I., earthquakes, tornadoes, floods, hurricanes, tsunamis, lightning, volcanoes, avalanches, and mudslides are also natural. On average, radon kills more people every year than all of those combined!
MYTH: My home is new, so I can’t have a radon problem.
FACT: Many newer homes have higher radon levels, than older ones, because they now design homes to have better porosity in the soil around the house. This is done for moisture control, but the result is easier flow for the radon gas to be drawn in. It doesn’t matter how old your home is, if there is the right amount of radium in the soil and there is a way to get in, you could have a serious problem.
MYTH: My reading was just below the EPA action level, so I’m safe.
FACT: "There is no such thing as a safe level of radon. Just like there is no "safe” number of cigarettes you can smoke a day. Therefore, we want to reduce the health risks of radon, by reducing the radon level in your home as much as it is practically possible.
MYTH: "Everything causes cancer”, so why worry?
FACT: Not everything causes cancer, but it seems like that sometimes on the news reports. Unfortunately, all of those less significant risks, like (cell phones, sugar substitutes, and second hand smoke) distract us from the major causes of cancer like smoking and radon. 12% of all cancer deaths have been linked to radon, and not just one person, but over 21,000 Americans die every year from radon. In other words, it doesn’t make much sense to worry about the splinter in your finger, when there’s’ a tree about to fall on you. So quit smoking, fix your radon problem, then maybe go ahead and relax and enjoy a diet soda!
MYTH: I already have a mitigation system in my home so I don’t need to test.
FACT: The only way to know the level of radon in your home is to re-test. The EPA recommends testing every two to three years. We have occasionally tested a house with an old but active mitigation system and the test results came back high (like it wasn’t even there). Always re-test; it’s easy and inexpensive.