Radon: The phantom menace

The Gardner-Dickinson Elementary School in Wynantskill, N.Y., houses approximately 376 students and 30 faculty members for about six hours each weekday. When two teachers developed breast cancer in the last two years, school officials were concerned that the facility might have an environmental problem. “We wanted to see if there was any relation between the cancer and the building,” says Wynantskill School District Superintendent Bill LeForestier.

An environmental study determined that the 30-year-old building had unsafe levels of radon in 43 areas, including LeForestier’s office. (While radon has not been linked to breast cancer, it is the second leading cause of lung cancer in the United States, according to EPA.)

To improve indoor air quality, it is important for cities and counties to test their buildings for gases like radon. When problems are discovered, repairs must be made within a reasonable amount of time to prevent long-term health problems. Local governments also can avoid environmental problems by incorporating pollutant-resistant building methods into the initial construction of new facilities.

A long-term threat

Radon is a naturally occurring gas that is produced by the radioactive decay of radium. It is colorless, odorless and undetectable except by specific testing. The gas can migrate from soil and rocks by diffusion and accumulate in enclosed areas and groundwater.

Radioactivity is measured in picocuries (pCi), and radon levels are noted by the amount of picocuries per liter of air (pCi/L). EPA has set the maximum safe level of radon in indoor air at 4 pCi/L. In drinking water, the EPA safe level is 4,000 pCi/L. Gardner-Dickinson Elementary had varying levels of radon. Tests showed that some rooms had zero pCi/L while others had more than 20 pCi/L.

Prolonged exposure to high radon levels may cause permanent damage to human lungs, but LeForestier quickly learned that radon did not pose an immediate threat. “I wanted to know right away if it was dangerous enough that I needed to evacuate the building,” he says. “I reacted like anyone else would – I was scared.”

But the school district had some time to work on the problem. Following the initial environmental tests in 1998, the school district confirmed the presence of radon during long-term tests in mid-1999.

It is important to perform both short-term (two to 90 days) and long-term (more than 90 days) tests to confirm radon’s presence, according to Joe Korfhage, laboratory director for Brookview, N.Y.-based Questar, which performed the tests at the school. Camroden Associates, a Westmoreland, N.Y.-based environmental services firm, confirmed the test results in fall 1999.

“Radon is a very fickle contaminant,” Korfhage says. “It peaks and drops all around the school building, but there were levels high enough that the district needed to act.”

LeForestier acted first by contacting the district’s School Emergency Response Team (SERT), which was developed to deal with emergency situations – anything from medical to environmental problems. SERT and Questar drafted a letter that was sent home with students in November to inform parents of the radon problem at the school. The district held an informational meeting about one week after the letter was delivered to give parents a forum for their questions.

“We were concerned that [school] attendance might drop the day after the letter went home, but that didn’t happen,” LeForestier says. “That was a pleasant surprise.”

He credits the calm reaction to the situation to the fact that many people around Wynantskill are already familiar with radon and know that it is not immediately life-threatening. All homes in the area are required to have radon tests before they can be sold, he explains.

Radon in the house

Radon has become a hot issue in the real estate market, according to Lou Witt, senior program manager for indoor environment programs for the National Association of Counties, Washington, D.C. Erie County, N.Y., for example, partnered with local realtors to ensure that all contracts indicate whether the home has been tested for radon.

Homes are not required to be tested, but the line in the contract brings the issue in front of the home buyer, Witt explains. “Builders and realtors are becoming more conscious that an environmentally friendly home is a better sell,” he says.

Radon awareness requires a lot of public outreach, and working with realtors is just one way to get the word out, Witt says. To help promote good indoor air quality, NACo has developed a free County Radon Action Kit that counties can use to educate the public about the problem.

The kit contains slides, fact sheets and a video that counties can use in presentations to media, community groups or schools. NACo also distributes EPA’s “Indoor Air Quality Tools for Schools” (see below). NACo has worked to obtain grant money for counties where radon problems are severe. (Those counties are classified as Zone 1.) Money can be used to hold public presentations, distribute materials or obtain radon test devices, which typically cost $10 to $25 each.

Community plans

Some cities and counties distribute test devices to residents and companies, but giving away the testers is not always a good idea, according to Emerick Cross, division leader of environmental health services in Wyandotte County, Kan. “It’s better to sell the units to people so that they invest some time and money,” he says. “Then they will be more apt to use them.”

Wyandotte County obtained 500 radon testers several years ago but had difficulty giving them away. “Most people didn’t know what [radon] was,” Cross says.

The county made public presentations on radon testing, but poor attendance forced officials to start going to church groups and schools to educate the public about the problem. “It’s a tough sell here in Wyandotte County,” Cross says. “We’re a blue-collar community, and we’ve got lots of other issues to deal with. People are a little leery about environmental issues like radon because they can’t see [the problem].”

Once the county began focusing on children’s health as part of radon education, people listened. Cross advises against using scare tactics, however.

In fact, children are not at a greater risk than adults for radon exposure, despite body weight, according to Paul Wagner, chief of the Radiation and Indoor Air Section for EPA’s Region 4 in Atlanta. Unless levels reach 100 pCi/L or above, there is no reason to panic, he adds.

“A good rule of thumb is, the higher the level, the more quickly you want to fix the problem,” he says. “The one nice thing about radon is that it’s easy to fix.”

Fixing the problem

Radon can be reduced in a variety of ways. Solutions usually must be implemented throughout a building because radon can spread so easily through HVAC systems and even through elevator shafts. One of the less expensive solutions is installation of depressurization systems that draw radon gas from the source to the outside, preventing it from entering the HVAC system or indoor air. Wynantskill is implementing that solution first, at a cost of about $20,000, according to LeForestier. The school will then re-test the building’s air to see if the radon level is safe.

If depressurization is not successful, the school will have to make the more costly correction of removing the source dirt in the open crawl space beneath the facility and sealing cracks and open spaces with concrete. That will cost $60,000 or more. (The district would fund the reconstruction through the likely sale of a building currently being leased.)

Although Wynantskill is moving quickly to solve its radon problem, its efforts are entirely voluntary. “EPA has no authority regarding radon,” Wagner explains. “From a public relations perspective, though, it’s best to fix [the radon problem] as quickly as possible.”

EPA cannot force school districts or other agencies to reduce radon levels in buildings, nor can it require homeowners to do so. While many cities and counties have launched public education campaigns to inform people about the danger of radon and the importance of testing, Kane County, Ill., has taken some of the burden away from residents by partnering with its cities, local builders and realtors.

Six years ago, Kane County – a Zone 1 county – received a grant from NACo to hold public workshops about radon, according to Fred Carlson, director of environmental health for the county. The need for education was urgent: “More than 50 percent of local radon tests showed levels over 4 pCi/L,” Carlson says.

The county started working with local builders to adopt EPA-recommended radon-resistant construction codes, and about half a dozen of them voluntarily adopted the codes. Based on that success, in 1998, Kane County partnered with the four townships in its jurisdiction to have them adopt the radon-resistant requirements into their city building codes. “Sustaining interest in radon has been difficult,” Carlson says. “Adopting the codes takes the work off the homeowner.”

Stop it before it starts

Although radon can be removed from a building, it is easier to control by keeping it out of the building in the first place. In 1994, EPA published “Radon Prevention in the Design and Construction of Schools and Other Large Buildings” to provide local governments with safe construction techniques.

Recommendations include the following: * Soil depressurization. A suction fan is used to produce a low-pressure field under the slab. The low-pressure field prevents radon entry by causing air to flow from the building into the soil. * Building pressurization. Indoor/ subslab pressure relationships are controlled to prevent radon entry. More outdoor air is supplied than is exhausted so that the building is slightly pressurized compared to both the exterior of the building and the subslab area. * Sealing radon entry routes. Major radon entry routes, such as floor/wall cracks, expansion joints and basement walls, are sealed to block or minimize radon entry.

Preventive methods may be the best solution for keeping safe radon levels, but often, little attention is paid to radon until it becomes a problem. The fact that radon does not pose immediate danger affects people’s reaction to it, according to Wagner. “If you tell someone he doesn’t have to act quickly, that implies that radon is not a problem,” he says. “But that’s not the case.”

“You don’t want to panic,” LeForestier says. “But you do want to find a good contractor and fix it.”