Radon

Hello, I hope you are having a wonderful day, today I am going to be talking to you about radon. Before coming into this class and doing my own research on radon. I didn’t really know much about it. I knew that it was an element on the periodic table but that is really it. Also, in high school, I was in an environmental safety class. We had to create a “technical project” relating to the field we are studying and present it at Sinclair Community College.  My group wanted to do indoor air quality in a high school. We spent multiple weeks testing the air for radon and other things like co2 levels. This doesn’t really have that much to do with radon but it relates to what I am talking about so I thought I should throw that in there for you. Anyway, let’s get back to talking about radon.

                Radon is a chemical element. Radon’s symbol is (Rn). Radon’s atomic number is 86. Radon is a radioactive, tasteless, odorless, colorless element. Radon is a noble gas.  It only occurs naturally as a decay product of the other element radium.  Radon is one of the densest substances that stay in a gas form under regular conditions. Radon is also one of the only elements that has no stable isotopes. Radon is also considered a human health hazard due to its intense radioactivity.  Unlike other middle elements in decay chains, radon is a gas and is easily inhaled.  This means that radon is responsible for most of the human’s exposure to ionization radiation. It is usually the single largest factor for a person’s background radiation dose. The levels of radon vary from location to location and even though radon has a short lifetime, some radon gas from natural sources can accumulate in to higher than normal readings in buildings. Usually in lower parts of the complex. Usually basements and crawl spaces because of its density. In some cases it can occur in water where groundwater is the source. Multiple sources and tests and studies have shown that there is a connection between breathing in high amounts of radon gas and lung cancer. So you can say that radon is a carcinogen. Radon is an element that effects indoor air quality worldwide. According to the United States environmental Protection Agency, “Radon is the second most frequent cause of lung cancer”.  After cigarette smoking that is, causing 21,000 deaths per year. Approximately 2,000 of these effect people that have never smoked. While radon is the number 2 most frequent cause of lung cancer, it is the number one cause of lung cancer to nonsmokers. Since radon is odorless, colorless, and tasteless, it is not detectable to human senses alone. That is why this element is so dangerous, because it is undetectable. People could be living with it in their basement and could have extreme levels or radon in their indoor air and not even notice it till it is too late. That is why routine checks of your house should be  performed  To protect you and your family.to learn more about radon click on the links below....

radon 1

radon 2

radon 3