Studies of uranium miners have shown that breathing high concentrations of radon can increase the risk of getting lung cancer. Enough radon gas seeps out of soil into basements and crawlspaces in parts of the United States to pose a real health risk to people living in homes built on that soil. The Web site can help homeowners determine what the chances are that they are breathing potentially dangerous levels of radon, and whether those risks are high enough to warrant measuring their actual exposure or having a contractor come in right away to install measures to reduce radon's infiltration in the house. Policymakers can also use the site as a tool to determine optimal policies for addressing radon health risks. The site prompts the user to choose his or her home state and county from a U.S. map, then asks a few questions about the house's basement, whether any known measurements of radon were made in the area, and how many smokers and nonsmokers live in the house.
Radon exposure increases the risk of lung cancer more for smokers than for nonsmokers.
It also recommends one of these four steps, based on the exposure level calculated. L are considered definitely dangerous by experts in the field. This level is roughly equivalent to the lifetime exposure of a uranium miner and increases cancer risk among nonsmokers appreciably, among smokers by considerably more. Even within a single U.S. county, radon can vary within a similar broad range. Hierarchical modeling allows the software to take the spatial variability of radon into account when calculating the odds of radon exposure where the home is located.