Radon is a colorless, odorless and tasteless gas that, after smoking, is the top cause of lung cancer. It is a naturally occurring radioactive element that results from the decay of uranium. It seeps up through soil and is undetectable in the air without the right equipment, and doesn ' t show up in blood or similar tests.
If radon is trapped indoors, people and animals can breathe it in, where it continues to decay in the lungs or gets lodged in lung tissue. The U. S. Environmental Protection Agency ' s action level for radon, the point where mitigation steps should be taken, is 4 picocuries per liter. A curie is a measurement of the rate atoms in radioactive material decay or disintegrate over time. A picocurie is one trillionth of a curie.
Anyone who lives in a home with elevated levels of radon is at heightened risk of lung cancer; being a smoker drastically increases that risk. Roughly 40 % of all homes in Pennsylvania have radon levels above the EPA action guideline, and the gas has been found at high levels in Lehigh and Northampton County homes.
Yang said he first became aware of radon at age 14 when he and his family moved from New Jersey to Upper Saucon Township. His concern about the carcinogenic gas led him to become an activist on radon awareness and testing.
Radon testing is not required in Pennsylvania, though the state Department of Environmental Protection recommends homes, schools and other buildings be tested. Yang said this is what motivated his study.
" I ' ve been thinking about this idea for many years," Yang said. " I ' ve seen that one of the big issues is that there ' s no mandatory testing in Pennsylvania, particularly in schools. Students are being exposed to radon but there ' s no law mandating that these schools test and make sure the levels are safe," Yang said.
He said he wanted to give an idea how much radon students are being exposed to and hopefully pressure schools to take radon testing more seriously.
What the study found
Getting a scientific paper published is no small feat, especially for someone as young as Yang. He said he began working on the manuscript in March 2024. Chrysan Cronin, professor at Lehigh University and coauthor of the paper, said the majority of the work was done by Yang.
" I just made sure he was doing sound research, calculations and writing. I served as his research mentor, but this was his project and it ' s fantastic," Cronin said.
Armin Ansari, director of the EPA ' s Center for Science and Technology, also assisted Yang in estimating the annual radiation dose children were exposed to.