Five years of a wobbly economy and 20 months of Midwestern drought have some health officials worried about a silent intruder lingering in your basement.
It?s radon gas, whether or not you care to think about it.
Don?t look now (because you can?t see radon or smell it), but conditions this winter are said to be perfect for furnaces to suck in and cough out cancer-causing alpha particles, drawn from parched soil and through drought-driven cracks in foundations.
And don?t be fooled by our recent snowstorms. No handful of wet-weather events cancels scientists? predictions that drought is apt to afflict the Kansas City region at least into spring ? all the while reconfiguring underground pathways for natural but slightly radioactive gases to travel.
Real estate agents say a sluggish housing market aggravates the situation: Homeowners tend to put off simple radon testing, which can cost less than a bottle of wine, until they?re ready to offer up their houses for sale. When they re-enter the market, they?re thrown by an accumulation of odorless gas that can botch a transaction.
?We recommend,? said Kim Steves of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment?s radon program, ?that you re-test your home every two years.?
The best time to test is right now, when the home is sealed up and furnaces are churning.
Here, in one the nation?s hottest spots for indoor radon levels above what federal authorities consider OK, most people pooh-pooh the threat even when buying a house, said Gary Hodgden of Midwest Radon. His Overland Park company tests homes and pipes radon out of them.
?We?re seeing a higher percentage of homes coming in with higher readings, and we?ve been seeing it for a year and a half,? he said.
Gary Martin of Lee?s Summit-based Integrity Building Inspections sees something similar setting in:
?I know of someone who, four years ago, had low levels of radon when he tested. More recently, the test came in at four times that amount.?
For the past quarter-century, experts have argued over the harm caused by exposure to radon gas ? an everyday reality attributed to the natural decay of uranium present in almost all kinds of soil. We?ve been breathing it in forever.
The U.S. surgeon general?s office and the Environmental Protection Agency link indoor radon to 20,000 lung-cancer deaths annually, but the risk is far greater for smokers than for nonsmokers.
Even then, the threat in cases of moderate exposure ? under 4 picocuries per liter, according to the EPA ? is marginal. Outdoor levels commonly are below 1 picocurie per liter.
?There?s a whole mess of factors that can affect radon levels,? said geologist Paul Hilpman, a University of Missouri-Kansas City professor emeritus. ?Long and short of it, the death rate from lung cancer is much more closely linked to people exposed to smoking, particularly secondhand smoke, than to radon gas.?
What seems a big point of agreement, however, is that local homeowners consider testing for radon ? especially if they haven?t through these last several years of extreme weather events.
Dry weather over several months, along with heavy snows and flooding, can change ground conditions and stress home foundations.
For as low as $10, do-it-yourself radon test kits can be purchased from hardware and home-improvement stores. They?re available free from the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services website.
High radon exposure probably would take many decades to kill you, say scientists and federal studies. Still, as the spring season of house-shopping approaches, ?can high radon muck up a real-estate sale?? asked John Moffitt, a local agent of Coldwell Banker Real Estate.
?Absolutely, it can.?
Drought can and will create radon problems ? or, in some cases, reverse them. Home foundations fracture, sometimes letting in gases routed through underground channels that open up when water tables drop.
The opposite often is true when water tables rise, because moisture is a barrier to radon gases leaking into houses.
?We know from flooding that occurred in Kansas City in the 1990s, the percentage of homes with elevated levels (of radon) dropped significantly,? said Bruce Snead, director of engineering extension at Kansas State University.
Indeed, indoor radon levels fluctuate daily ? higher in the winter, lower in pleasant weather, up and down depending on how often windows are opened, attic fans are running or traffic comes in an out of a house.
Homes that aren?t constantly sealed tend to gather lower measurements of radon gas.
In the Kansas City region, between a third and 45 percent of homes that are tested harbor radon levels higher than 4 picocuries per liter, the level at which the EPA recommends corrective action. (Nationally, the average home tests at a safe 1.3.)
For roughly the price of installing a new water heater, or about $1,000, radon mitigation companies can run piping from the ground beneath a basement through a fan that blows radon gas above the roof.
Health officials caution against assuming that radon levels measured more than five years ago ? say, when you had your house inspected before purchasing it ? still hold true.
Soils and basement footings shift, especially through weird weather patterns. A new furnace or air conditioning system, altered plumbing, improved insulation and structural additions to a home also can affect the circulation of radon gas.
Still, the science of radon is wildly inexact.
The World Health Organization calls for dwellings to be fixed when indoor radon levels reach half of what the EPA recommends. And if the EPA?s standards are lax, geologist Hilpman notes they?re predicated on someone spending 18 hours daily in the same home for 70 years.
A bill introduced this year in the Kansas Legislature would make radon testing mandatory for every home sale.
Laws enacted in Kansas since 2009 have set new standards for certifying radon inspectors and reporting properties where high indoor levels exist.
The legislation largely is driven by companies that relocate employees and, in many cases, stand to be held liable if a home tests high for radon.
?Employers relocating will demand thorough home inspections partly for liability protection,? said Bill Rounds of Illinois-based HomeBuyer?s Preferred, a relocation company. ?High radon is the most serious thing (they?re looking for), because it?s known to be a carcinogen.?
Legal protection aside, the Kansas standards allow officials to track radon levels to precise addresses ? ultimately enabling the state to compare the reported levels to health problems diagnosed in residents, said Steves of the Kansas Radon Project.
?We?re really at the very early stages of this,? she said. ?The state has more data than we had a few years ago, and the data we have is better.?
Missouri is less vigilant in requiring that home radon levels be reported and that inspectors be certified. But that hasn?t kept one family from doing all it can to reduce radon levels in a house once occupied by a Northland woman ? a nonsmoker ? who died last summer from lung cancer.
After her mother?s death, Linda Jensen and her siblings had the ranch home tested for radon and discovered readings surpassing 20 picocuries per liter, five times the level considered a health concern by the EPA.
The mother died at 80 and had lived in the house since the 1950s.
?We all agreed, 100 percent, that nobody would acquire the house until it was treated and brought to safe levels,? Jensen said.
The family is still working on it.
Last month, a radon-mitigation crew visited the house for a fourth time to bring levels down to something as close to nil as possible.
Source: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/03/03/4097720/drought-could-mean-more-radon.html
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