Thomas Faison looks out over Northeast Portland while receiving an experimental treatment at Providence Cancer Institute. Eight private homeowners or
landlords within 1,000 feet of his former childhood home, which was owned by Multnomah County's housing authority, have installed radon removal systems.
“HOW DO I HAVE LUNG CANCER?”
Thomas Faison felt pressure on the right side of his chest. He thought it was a bad
cold, maybe pneumonia.
The diagnosis — delivered two years ago this month — oored him.
“My immediate question was, like, ‘How do I have lung cancer, how bad is it?’”
said Faison, now 37, a father of four.
The suspected cause of Faison’s cancer is only now coming into clearer focus:
radon exposure growing up in a known radon hotbed, Northeast Portland.
It included roughly seven years in a home owned by Portland’s housing authority.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, during the years Congress was trying to make
HUD tackle radon in public housing, Faison lived in a small ranch-style house two
blocks north of Alberta Street. It was a decade before gentri cation began to
upend the historically African American neighborhood.
Radon repairs