this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2023
69 points (100.0% liked)

Canada

7202 readers
324 users here now

What's going on Canada?



Communities


🍁 Meta


🗺️ Provinces / Territories


🏙️ Cities / Local Communities


🏒 SportsHockey

Football (NFL)

  • List of All Teams: unknown

Football (CFL)

  • List of All Teams: unknown

Baseball

Basketball

Soccer


💻 Universities


💵 Finance / Shopping


🗣️ Politics


🍁 Social and Culture


Rules

Reminder that the rules for lemmy.ca also apply here. See the sidebar on the homepage:

https://lemmy.ca


founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Radon is the leading cause of lung cancer in Canada for nonsmokers, as the radioactive gas can build up to hazardous levels indoors.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Radon is denser, it gets sucked into your house because of the pressure difference. Since it is denser it will pool in the lower levels so the guidelines say to test the lowest floor where you spend a lot of time. If there's not high amounts of radon in that location it won't be in the upper floors.

Air circulation internally should cause the amount to average across your entire house. And internal to external ventilation is how you get it to dissipate. That's why the guideline is to test for at least 3 months over the winter when houses are more sealed up. That way you get the worst case result and over the summer it would probably be less.

Radon is dangerous because it's radioactive with a half life of 3 days which is a very human timescale compared to some other radioactive particles and if a radon particle happens to be inside your lungs when it does decay it will damage your lung tissue and long term repeated exposure will put you at greater risk of lung cancer.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Radon is just regular air that gets irradiated by uranium ore in the soil. It doesn't settle in your house, the basement just tends to have less airflow.