Radon in Canada
The majority of cities and towns in Canada have been built on high radon potential soils. This includes the BC interior, the Yukon, the Prairies, the Greater Toronto Area, much of Quebec and the Atlantic province region.
- Canada is a very large country with many areas of VERY HIGH RADON POTENTIAL (meaning >300 Bq/kg of surficial geology – see Monograph #7 for details).
- Canada also has STRONG SEASONAL FLUCTUATIONS in weather and temperature – meaning our winters are often very cold, and our summers are very hot. Collectively, this environment causes Canadians to spend a great deal of time inside either artificially warmed or cooled indoor air environments. Such environments have the potential for highly concentrated radon levels.
- Without knowing it, Canadians have settled and built our villages, towns and cities on soils with very high radon potential, and we have designed and build houses that are very ‘good’ radon capture and contain devices. Thus, Canadians are among the MORE RADON-EXPOSED POPULATIONS on Earth.
- It is important to recognize that this problem is preventable but, by and large, is no-one’s
What the science says:
There have been several recent studies on Canadian radon exposure including:
Publications comparing Canadian radon to countries all over the globe (Gaskin et al., 2018 and Stanley et al., 2019 (LINK) ).