Radon in your home could be more dangerous than mould
By Fiona Wagner • Bankrate.com

Imagine going to the doctor with a chronic cough and being told that you have lung cancer, even though you've never smoked a cigarette in your life. This diagnosis is given to hundreds of Canadians each year, and the cause may be radon -- a colourless, odourless radioactive gas that slowly seeps through basement cracks or openings. The Canadian Cancer Society estimates that 12 percent of lung cancer deaths can be attributed to radon exposure. That means in 2006, more than 2,300 people could be poisoned by their own homes.

Health Canada recently revealed plans to drop our radon remedial action guideline -- the level at which Canadians should fix the radon problem in their home -- from 800 becquerels per cubic metre (Bq/m3), the second highest guideline in the world, to 200 Bq/m3. This is in line with other industrialized countries such as Australia, Sweden and the United Kingdom, yet still higher than the more stringent 148 Bq/m3 guideline set by the United States in 1986. This action is largely in response to recent studies that show a measurable risk of lung cancer at radon exposure levels as low as 100 Bq/m3.

"Before now, there wasn't good enough research to prove the link between lung cancer and radon," says Health Canada spokesperson Renee Bergeron. "With all the studies, we recognized there was a link."

Many people are applauding Health Canada's proposed plan but two questions remain: why is Canada so far behind the rest of the world, and how will this change affect us?

Radon testing is the norm in the U.S.
"Canada was a little more cautious before lowering the radon guideline levels," suggests Jay Kassirer, executive director of the Health Indoors Partnership."It wasn't until they thought we had enough evidence. The U.S. at an earlier point said, 'We have enough evidence.'"

While knowledge about radon has been around for decades, Canadian concerns about indoor radon exposure originated in the late 1970s when elevated radon levels were found in some mining town homes. Health Canada responded by conducting tests on 14,000 residences in 18 cities across the country. Although the tests revealed that a number of homes in some regions had radon levels above those suggested for houses in uranium mining communities, Health Canada believed there wasn't a strong enough correlation between radon exposure and lung cancer deaths to warrant a strong government response or health scare.

Meanwhile, radon became big news south of the border in 1984 when a Pennsylvania home was found contaminated with radon readings of 100,000 Bq/m3 -- more than 700 times that of the federal standard. This sparked a huge public health crisis and by the end of 1986, tens of thousands of U.S. homes had been checked for radon contamination. The results suggested that as many as one in eight American homes had a radon problem, prompting the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to declare indoor radon the most deadly environmental hazard in the U.S., responsible for between 5,000 and 20,000 lung cancer deaths a year.

While the EPA and surgeon general issued a nationwide health advisory, urging that every home in the U.S. be tested for radon (at an estimated cost of US $10 to US $20 billion), Canada was more reserved, adapting the current 800 Bq/m3 guideline derived from studies that examined occupational exposure risks for workers in underground uranium mines.