Riled about radon Health officials in Canada are much less concerned about the contamination of homes with cancer-causing radon gas than their international counterparts. Radon has been fingered by several leading U.S. health and science organizations as the second leading cause of lung cancer after smoking. It may be poisoning you silently from the ground beneath your house - seeping from the soil into your home's air supply. Radon gas percolates up through the soil and into basements through cracks or sumps where it can build up to hazardous concentrations. It can also get into the air if contaminated well water is heated or agitated.
Radon quickly decays into so-called daughter particles.
If you breathe them in, they continue to decay in the lungs, damaging the fragile tissues. Smokers who are exposed to high levels of radon are at greater risk of developing lung cancer than non-smokers. These health hazards have created a heightened state of alert in the U.S., where its more common for homeowners to test for radon, and to take measures to eliminate it if the gas if found to be present. The lower level of concern in Canada may have something to do our health officials' higher threshold of tolerance for the gas. The World Health Organization's safe exposure guidelines are also five times lower than Canada's.