What You Need To Know About Radon In Your Home

If you’re looking to make your home as safe as it can possible be, it is likely going to be a good idea for you to invest in residential radon testing services. After all, radon is a gas that is both odorless and unable to be seen by the naked eye, as well as tasteless, to round it all out. This makes it hard to detect outside of the methods used by residential radon testing services. Fortunately, however, the process of testing your home for radon will be a relatively painless one.

Though there are a number of methods used by residential radon testing companies, it is likely that a short term test will be utilized. This short term test will typically detect radon levels for at least two days, but is often able to be utilized up to 90 days after being placed. Long term tests are also available. These tests are better able to detect radon for longer periods of time, after that 90 day period. These tests can accurately help to determine what radon levels are, with relative ease, throughout the typical residential home.

But why, exactly, are these residential radon testing services so highly important? For one thing, radon levels that meet or exceed the EPA action level are more commonly found in homes than many people realize. As a matter of fact, it has been found that up to one fifteenth of all homes in this country have radon levels that meet this classification. And some parts of the country are even more heavily impacted than others. For instance, it has been found that, across up to seven states and in three Native American reservations, as many as one third of all homes have high radon levels.

And radon levels are much more dangerous than the average person realizes. Unfortunately, radon exposure – particularly regular radon exposure at high levels – has been linked to a number of health issues, including lung cancer. As a matter of fact, exposure to radon has become the second leading cause of lung cancer in the entirety of the United States. Unfortunately, this means that radon exposure alone leads to as many as 20,000 lung cancer related deaths throughout the duration of just one single year. Of course, this is a number that is hugely significant, as only smoking and tobacco usage as a whole leads to more devastation in relation to lung cancer, a disease that is unfortunately often not detected until it reaches its later stages.

This is why residential radon testing services are so immensely important. Residential radon testing services can allow you to better understand your risk factors – and to take further steps depending on the radon levels that are ultimately detected within your home. For instance, if residential radon testing services have detected a high level of radon in your home, you can hire a radon mitigation service to come in and help you deal with it, bringing your home’s radon levels back down to a safe range if not eliminating them altogether.

Fortunately, it is quite a bit easier to reduce these radon levels than many might think. For instance, even passive levels of mitigation will often do as much as cut radon levels in any given home in half. And if radon levels still need to be lowered in some form, they can be further reduced through the use of tools like the radon ventilation fan. Radon ventilation fans are popularly used when it comes to reducing radon levels and justifiably so, as they are very effective at the job that they do.

At the end of the day, radon mitigation is something that should be utilized when necessary, as it can be quite critical indeed for human safety, especially in a home where radon levels are high. Therefore, it is important that residential radon testing services are put into place as well. The combination of utilizing these two services is hugely effective in promoting and protecting the safety of many people all throughout the United States – and likely will continue to be in the years that are ahead.