Smoking increases risk
Schwartz said when he purchased his Grand Forks home, it tested at 36 pCi / L before a mitigation system was installed.“ And there are homes in Pennsylvania, in North Dakota and in many places in the U. S. that are 200 picocuries or more,” he said.
Smoking increases risk
If there are smokers in the home already, lung cancer risks increase exponentially, said Ryan Levy, a cardiothoracic surgeon and lung specialist at UPMC.
“ There are several studies out there that show that high radon exposures among smokers dramatically increases the risk of lung cancer,” said Levy, although he added there’ s very little data available regarding second-hand smoke exposure and radon.
He explained that as people inhale radon, which results from the decay of uranium, thorium and radium, the gas gets“ inhaled into the lungs and then causes damage to the DNA, the cells in the lungs,” and then the person becomes much more predisposed to the development of lung cancer.“ So the problem with radon is, it ' s colorless, it ' s odorless. You don ' t really know it ' s there.”
Radon measurements are typically the highest in the winter months, which increases the danger for northern states.
“ Let ' s say it ' s 30 below, which it has been quite recently [ in North Dakota ] and you heat your house to 70 degrees. Well, then you just created a 100 degree temperature difference between the ground and your house. So the air in your house is going to act like a straw and pull soil gasses through the foundation as it rises. And, of course, because it ' s 30 below and heat is expensive, you ' ve really insulated your house. So the radon gas gets in, but it can ' t get out, and in the wintertime, people spend, on average, an astonishing 16 hours a day in their homes.”