How do I protect myself from radon?

The only way to know about your personal exposure to radioactive radon is to test your built environment (especially your home). All homes have some level of radon and several factors affect indoor radon levels, with building age, type of home, number of storeys, region of Canada, and community type (to name a few) all working together to affect residential radon exposure. It is important to note that levels can vary dramatically, even between similar homes located next to each other. 

Using a Health Canada-recommended long-term (90+ day) radon test is the most reliable way to determine your radioactive radon exposure. To ensure accuracy and reliability, Health Canada recommends placing your radon test in the lowest occupied level of your home (the level where you or someone else spends four or more hours per day, i.e. basement office or main floor living room). Once a reliable radon reading is obtained, the Evict Radon National Study has developed a free radiation dose calculator to estimate how much radiation an adult human receives in their home and the increased lung cancer risk associated with residential radon exposure. 

To find out your exposure to radioactive radon and to help cancer researchers from across Canada better understand these exposures, purchase an at-cost test kit.

Radon Mitigation

Health Canada recommends that people mitigate their homes if their radon level exceeds the Canadian Guideline of 200 Bq/m³. Hiring a certified Canadian National Radon Proficiency Program (C-NRPP) professional will ensure an effective radon reduction. 

Radon can be easily prevented from entering most properties and reduced by more than 80%. This is usually quick (1-2 days’ work) and, even for the most drastic (but effective) of interventions, it still only costs about the same as replacing a few windows.

Radon and Lung Cancer:

• Large population studies show clearly that a person’s lifetime relative risk of lung cancer becomes statistically significant at levels at or more than >100 Bq/m³ of long-term radon exposure.
• There is an additive ~16% increase in relative lifetime risk of lung cancer for every 100 Bq/m³ of long-term radon exposure a person experiences. This finding was based on three independent studies (one in North America, another in Europe, and one from China) involving >10,000 lung cancer patients and >10,000 healthy controls all published in 2004 – 2005.
• Using over 29,000 radon-tested properties, our 2021 study showed that radon exposure is occurring at levels known to cause cancer, with the top 10 highest exposures seeing the equivalent of 1500 – 12,000 chest x-rays worth of radiation per year!