Sometimes, what’s common doesn’t always mean safe. At times, something common can actually be deadly; a silent killer. Resulting from natural uranium decay, as a gas emitted to the air, radon gas has been proven a health hazard for some time now.
Radon gas is similar to carbon monoxide for a couple reasons. For one, they are both invisible and two, they don’t have any odor at all. That basically means you’ll never know you’ve got radon in your system unless its adversities are already eating up the balance in your system.
Radon In and Out
Radon is usually only harmful when it is found indoors. When it is outdoors, no harm can be taken from it at all because before it can even be breathed, it undergoes filtration and diffusion in the atmosphere. On the other hand, when radon is trapped in the home, its harmful effects can lead the inhabitants to fatality, especially when the concentration levels are above normal.
Radon Gas Dangers
There are only a few dangers posed by radon gas. However, they are usually the deadly kind of dangers. While there are no short-term effect findings in most cases, always be wary of the possible long-term effects radon is capable of inducing. In that sense, it is different from carbon dioxide which can cause fatigue, dizziness, headaches and other bearable symptoms. Though it has never been proved for radon to cause these symptoms, here are the following prolonged effects it is sure to bring:
-Based on recent studies, radon gas is among the noxious gases that have been causing the death of 21,000 lung cancer patient per year average. And, radon has been proven to be second of the biggest causes of lung cancer.
-People who don’t smoke but are frequently exposed to radon have higher death contingencies compared to those who smoke but are not exposed to radon. The worst case are for those who smoke and are exposed to radon – they may experience severe heartaches, nerve constrictions and heavy breathing from time to time.
-Based on the most recent EPA announcement, radon accounts to a hundred times more fatalities than the carbon monoxide gas. Unfortunately, this fact continues to remain unknown to the general mass.
The only real way to protect you and the family from radon gas dangers is to acquaint yourself with the different means to enter the home without bringing radon into it and rediscovering the means to clear out the presence of radon or at the very least, adjust it to a minimal scale.
The Entry of Radon
In most cases, radon enters the home through its foundations and structures from beneath. When a massive rise of the gas comes detected within the home, it is because the soil to which the house has been built is contaminated with radon. So basically, you have been prone to the ground zero of radon since the beginning of your inhabiting the home. Anyhow, when the gas within the soil ascends through the cracks in the basement, air conditioning units, sump pumps, water wells along with or through other possible entries into the home, that’s when your clock starts to tick. Another important thing: even homes without basements can be contaminated with radon.
Detecting Radon
There are radon test kits available containing a variety of testing materials. There’s the siren alarm and there are also water testers. You can also go with professionals doing the whole testing methods so they can thoroughly examine the samples and determine the level of threat that your home poses with its radon contamination.
