JANUARY IS radon awareness month. A study was just completed that showed high concentrations in areas around Clark County. Officials encourage area residents to check their radon levels.
It’s invisible, odorless and tasteless.
But radon causes about 20 percent of the lung cancers in non-smokers – some 20,000 deaths each year across the U.S., according to the Washington Department of Health’s tracking network.
“I urge everybody to test their homes,” said Mike Brenner, state radon officer for the Department of Health.
Brenner said a Portland State University professor has studied the problem in Portland and made maps showing high concentrations. Now he’s done the same thing in the Vancouver area, in time for radon awareness month in January.
“The Washington Tracking Network has some new maps and tables that give more data and detailed information than before,” Brenner said.
Radon comes from the radioactive decay of radium, which is commonly found in soils and rocks. Radon can come into a building from underneath, and its concentration can be tens to hundreds of times the level in outdoor air, according to the tracking network.
“We find there are a lot of zip codes where a higher percentage of houses have higher radon levels than we thought,” Brenner said. “The Glacier Lake Missoula floods brought material from Idaho and Spokane and deposited it in some not-so-obvious places.”
The floods ripped through eastern Washington and created the Columbia River Gorge at the end of the last ice age, about 10,000 to 15,000 years ago, Brenner said.
“The floods were awfully darn impressive,” he said. “The basin Portland is in was filled as deep as a 40-story building. I’ve read that in fields 10 miles downstream of Portland on the (Columbia River) they’ve found bones of mammoths that were drowned. The peak flow of the flood was 10 cubic miles of water per hour. It was more a tsunami than a breaker.”
That flow was 60 times the flow of the Amazon River, which is the world’s largest river today, according to Montana Natural History Center officials. It might have taken up to a week for the lake that had formed near today’s Missoula, MT, to completely drain. Water moved at speeds between 30 and 50 miles per hour across eastern Washington.
“The floodwaters from Glacial Lake Missoula moved through eastern Washington on a 430-mile journey to the Pacific Ocean, forever changing the landscape by stripping away topsoil and picking apart the bedrock,” the history center’s website.
Brenner said the flood was a wall of water 800 feet as it passed through the area that’s now Spokane. The lake itself, at the Missoula site, was 1,800 feet deep, he said.
With that water moving so much potentially radioactive debris downstream, Brenner said it’s important for everyone to check their radon levels. An inexpensive, do-it-yourself test kit is available online or in hardware stores.
“The evidence and studies are really good that radon can induce lung cancer,” Brenner said. “Radon doesn’t definitely cause cancer, but it increases your chances of getting it. It’s like a roll of the dice.”
A house is one of those places that, if constructed in a certain way, soil gasses will be trapped, he said. Those who test will either find they don’t have a problem or that will find they have a radon problem and it’s easy to deal with, Brenner said.
There is much more information at the Washington Department of Health website, www.doh.wa.gov/communityandenvironment/contaminates/radon.
AT A GLANCE
RADON INFO
Source: Radon comes from the natural (radioactive) breakdown of uranium in soil, rock and water. It gets into the air people breathe.
Testing: It’s the only way to know if you and your family are at risk. Radon can get into any type of building, but the threat is greatest at home. The EPA and Surgeon General recommend testing all homes below the third floor.
Travel path: Radon can get into a building through cracks in solid floors, construction joints, cracks in walls, gaps in suspended floors, gaps around service pipes, cavities inside walls, and the water supply.
Source – U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
