When the home they were selling tested higher than the EPA safe limit level on radon, Jacqueline and Jeffrey Spinks of Boylston said they would fix the problem.
A test on the Spinks’ 20-year-old Colonial-style house in June had shown a reading of 6.5 picocuries per liter, which had increased from the 3.9 pCi/L they had measured when they bought the house four years ago. The Environmental Protection Agency safe limit level is 4 pCi/L.
The Spinks were willing to mitigate the radon, but their buyers backed out.
They installed a system with Eagle Environmental, a certified radon mitigation firm in West Boylston, which brought the radon concentration down to 0.4 pCi/L, but the buyers “didn’t want to take a chance,” Mrs. Spinks said.
“Everybody knows if you have a house in Massachusetts, you’re going to have a radon level,” Mrs. Spinks said.
Radon has been identified in studies as a leading indoor health hazard and the second-leading cause of lung cancer after smoking. About 21,000 people die from radon-related lung cancer every year, with 2,900 of those deaths among nonsmokers, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
But many people live in homes with high levels of radon and aren’t aware of it or haven’t taken relatively simple steps to mitigate the risk.
Federal, state and local health agencies have been trying to get the word out that this invisible, odorless, radioactive gas, caused by decaying uranium and radium in the soil, shouldn’t be overlooked.
In June the EPA and eight other federal departments released a Federal Radon Action Plan to raise awareness and increase prevention and risk-reduction efforts. The EPA declared October as Radon Awareness Month, according to regional Press Officer Paula Ballentine.
Locally, homeowners often don’t think about radon unless they’re involved in buying, selling or remodeling a home, and then they may be surprised by what they find out.
“The fact of the matter is approximately 38 percent of homes (in Worcester County) have radon levels that exceed acceptable limits,” said Worcester Department of Public Health Director Derek S. Brindisi. “That alone is cause for public health concern.”
The EPA suggests that people take action to reduce the radon level if it exceeds the safe limit level of 4 pCi/L. The World Health Organization, however, has established a more stringent limit of 2.7 pCi/L.
Nationally, the average indoor radon level is 1.3 pCi/L. But in Worcester, Middlesex and Essex counties in Massachusetts, the average concentration is expected to be higher than 4 pCi/L, largely because of regional rock and soil characteristics, placing these areas in the highest risk category set by the EPA.
Radon enters a house as a gas that seeps into air spaces such as basements or crawl spaces. It can also dissolve in well water and contribute to airborne radon in homes when released through running water, according to information published by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health.
When radon undergoes radioactive breakdown, its byproducts, called “daughters” or “progeny,” stick to dust particles in the air. Inhaling these particles damages the cells lining the lung and can cause cancer.
Homeowners can test for radon using a small kit available at hardware stores for about $15 and sending the sample containers to a lab for around $30.
Mr. Brindisi said that in the past two years, his department worked with the state Department of Public Health to distribute free test kits to Worcester homeowners. “They had given us about 100 kits a year,” he said. “We probably had less than a dozen takers. We didn’t have a great turnout.”
Mr. Brindisi said there’s no requirement that a home be tested for radon, but many home inspectors raise that as an issue during a real estate inspection.
Patricia Whittaker, a Realtor at Jack Walker, Realtor in the Whitinsville section of Northbridge, said that she only recalled one sale that had fallen through because of a high radon level. “Most times the seller will step up and put in the mitigation system. But they run around $1,000,” she said.
John Luggo, co-owner of Eagle Environmental, said people have misconceptions that only old houses with dirt-floor basements and fieldstone foundations have high levels of radon.
“The reality is, it’s the opposite,” Mr. Luggo said. “It’s new, tight houses. The worst-case scenarios are new construction.”
He said that during the 24 years that he’s been in business, people have become more health conscious and take radon risks more seriously. About 40 percent of Eagle Environmental’s customers aren’t in a real estate transaction but seek mitigation just because they’re concerned.
“A lot of people in the beginning thought it was a fad,” he said. “People used to call us ‘Ghost Busters.’”
Mr. Luggo said he’s seen homes with high radon levels in which a young, nonsmoking nanny with a basement bedroom or a middle-aged physician with a basement workshop had developed lung cancer. “It is realistic,” he said.
John Spokis, owner of Radon Systems LLC in Dudley, said radon is typically mitigated with a “sub-slab ventilation” system in which PVC piping is run from a pocket beneath the house up to the roof. A fan creates a vacuum that draws the gas up to be dispersed outside the house, where it dissipates and becomes harmless.
The pipe can be run outside the house or through the interior, but Mr. Spokis said homeowners often opt for the exterior installation because it’s at the lower end of the $800-to-$1,500-or-more price range.
Home sellers Steven and Kelly Lariviere of Northbridge weren’t surprised when the ranch-style house that Mr. Lariviere had grown up in, built in 1963, tested at 4.9 pCi/L as part of a pending home sale. Mr. Lariviere hired Mr. Spokis to mitigate the radon and considered it just a part of the real estate transaction cost.
Contact Susan Spencer by email at sspencer@telegram.com.
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