EP #6: Radon: Exactly How Harmful Can It Be?

Radon can harm us in many ways, do you know where it even comes from or how it gets into our homes? Listen in as Rick explains all that...and more!


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https://collierhomeinspector.com/

Trade Secrets Inspections
Rick Kooyman
rick@TradeSecretsInspections.com
(239) 537-1186

Transcript

Charlie  

Welcome to the Trade Secrets Inspections podcast, because “You need to know!”. Here's your host, Rick Kooyman. 

Hey, welcome back to the Trade Secrets Inspections podcast. I'm Charlie McDermott here with Rick Kooyman. Rick, how you doing?

Rick 

I'm doing excellent Charlie, it's great to be with you again.

Charlie  

Great to be with you and I'm looking forward to another really important topic. I know Radon is something you and I have kind of discussed off—I was gonna say off camera- off microphone I guess technically with a podcast, and you know coming from Pennsylvania Radon was a big big deal because we had basements and air quality and all that and so that was an important test. I got down to Florida and I didn't I didn't think Radon was a thing here I didn't realize it until I you know we started talking so I'm really happy you're going to get into Radon and actually touch on some water quality points today so I'm going to turn the mic over to you because you're the one should be taught by Radon man that me so listen what's going on with Radon in Florida here?

Rick 

Yeah, let's discuss Radon. First, let's talk about what Radon is to begin with. So we kind of are on the same page here. And when we when we say the word Radon, what we're referring to, is a gas that's actually produced by the disintegration of uranium, essentially, it's a radiation gas, it's pretty much found everywhere. It occurs naturally in the soil and the earth, you know, all over the place. So it primarily comes out of rocks, essentially, because that's where we're going to find the uranium products in and depending on where we're at geographically, it does matter. Absolutely, there are places where it's more prevalent than others and as a lot of people think here down or down here in Florida that that it's really not prevalent in the soil. And that's true to some extent, we do find it in the soil to a degree and there are pockets where it's more prevalent than others but more importantly where we find Radon coming from is it actually comes from the building products that are being used so when we're using a lot of concrete products in the state, you know a lot of things are built out a block and slabs and stones and all those things contain those radiation products and so depending on where they were sourced from and what we're putting in to the home. Radon levels vary greatly from location to location so honestly the only way to know what you got in that regard is to test for it because Radon is ubiquitous in its nature. It doesn't have any taste or odor or color there's there's really no way to perceive it. To know that it's around. And you know the government monitors it. There is currently a rating for Collier County is sitting at 20% of the homes right now or 20% of the land in Collier County is rated at above the safe level of what they measure of for picocuries liters; picocuries liters is a weird unit. It's just a measure it's a very small like it's a trillionth per two radiation units per minute. It's a weird science unit but they do have a standard essentially and we can measure to that unit and the standard is for the cutoff line is 4.0 picocuries liters. Okay. Anywhere in that area is going to be you know a risk zone to say that 3.9 is safe and 4.0 is not is kind of silly but somewhere we got to draw the line so at 4.0 they say you must put a mitigation system in to accommodate for it but below that we're not required to. Personally I find it in testing in the area about one in five homes we test come up positive for it. Like I said there's no real rhyme or reason to it. I've seen it in multiple story condos you know 10th floor unit, the one unit will have it and the adjoining unit will not and again it's very dependent on you know, pipe chases and materials used in in the unit. You know things like granite counter tops can be very protective. And Radon. You'd be surprised you know if we put a Radon unit a testing unit in a home and we set it near a granite counter top. It will come back positive every time so placement of the devices are our key knowledge on how you're supposed to set these things up is also you know, it's it's part of why they're licensed you know state licensing is required to do Radon. I myself am not Radon licensed, I use third party contractors I have several environmental companies I work with that allow them to do the Radon testing.

You know, the crazy thing about Radon is is that it's, it's it's one of the leading causes of cancer in the country. You know, especially if you're a smoker it's very dangerous for people who smoke and it leads to lung cancer at 4 picocuries liters It's said that 62 out of 1000 people who smoke will end up with lung cancer and if you don't smoke it's going to be about seven so it's not as prevalent in the non smoking community but it is the leading cause of cancer in the world you know so wow for something that most people don't even realize to pay attention to it's it's pretty prevalent they say 21,000 people per year die from it countrywide you know, which is more than get killed in drunk driving. That's an interesting number right? Um, so what can we do about radar and doesn't matter the age of the home or any of those things a factor? And the answer to that is no, actually we the ground is constantly changing what's going on beneath us and what's in the house is pretty consistent generally unless you do remodeling and then absolutely you probably want to retest after you do any kind of remodeling but generally they say you should retest every two years. Testing takes a couple of days for professional tests, we put a unit in the house, it sits for 72 hours and the idea is is to keep the home as closed up as possible because Radon accumulates over time so essentially, you know we generally sleep in it is what we think of it you know the house gets closed up and you spend all those hours just laying in there fermenting and whatever is collecting in the house and if you're not accommodating for higher Radon levels then you're saturating yourself in Radon while you sleep so that's where the health effects come from. New Construction there is means by which they can do things to mitigate the allowed Radon to come from the ground if there's barriers that can be put in under the slabs, plastics, different techniques we don't really do that down here in Florida so much it's mostly coming from the building products is the reason why so we just say you know let's just test every unit and if it's there we’ll contend with it and there's you know, 3 to $5,000 is typical price range for Radon mitigation system. And essentially all we're doing is is cycling air in and out of the home so that the stagnation doesn't occur you know, so it's essentially just a ventilation system that's being put in that’s constantly running in the background at a very low pressure so that we reduce the accumulations in different areas get the airflow get the thing exactly there are tests on the market you can go to the you know your local hardware store and you can pick up a do it yourself test for Radon they're generally little charcoal packages that you leave sitting around that stuff is effective it's not nearly as accurate as the high quality testing units that we bring in from the environmental companies those things are super fancy they record air pressure temperature you know if you open and close the door while the units are in the home, it records the pressure changes and the temperature changes and it's measuring the gas levels. So it's a very sophisticated test that's being done that way. So you get a real accurate result.

Charlie  

Wow, okay. Wow, this is fascinating, you know, it all all now makes sense to me. And the fact that building products...is...

Rick Kooyman  

Yeah, that's, that's really the interesting part of it. The one thing we get get Radon from outside of the building products which is odd in a lot of people's mind it actually is in the water, especially if we're using well water, the prevalence of Radon it's actually dissolved into the water and it actually comes out of the water in a gas form. To some extent we do ingest it into the water. If it's in the water in a saturated level. You know, so when We're drinking it, we can be drinking the Radon in the water and there hasn't been any recorded high redolence prevalence of ingesting Radon being a problem, it's it's the gas, Radon that's causing lung cancer, that's the, that's the real problem. So things like when we take a shower, you know, and there's all this evaporation from the hot water, high levels of Radon in the water will accumulate, obviously, whenever that's occurring, so water can be a very big source of where Radon comes from. And again, there are ways to mitigate the Radon in the water. Oftentimes, well systems out here we use air aeration tanks to begin with because of the sulfur content and odor in the water. And that's a great way to help mitigate the Radon as well because it gives it time, and it's literally aerating the water. So you're literally taking the gas out of the water, which is exactly what we're trying to do for that, you know, so that's a good move. 

But you know, on the topic of water, which is why we were going to mix today's Radon topic with water testing, and what's in your water. You know, it's kind of a great segue there, you know, well, water and city water are kind of two different beasts. When we drink from our public water, it goes through a treatment plant. There's requirements of testing and levels of all kinds of different things to be monitored. In fact, water is a very touchy subject with the health department down here. And you're always allowed access public access to the testing results. But you know, testing public water isn't really necessary, because it's constantly tested by the government. And if you test it yourself, and you think you're going to come back and report something to them that you found, you're going to have a fight on your hands. We don't often get into the world of testing city water, but you can test city water if you're concerned with, you know, particular problems of the building, you're looking at, like lead pipes or something like that localize. So in that regard. Absolutely. You want to test all sorts of water, the VA, if you're doing FHA or VA loans, they specifically require water test for part of the loan package because they want to know what they're writing alone on in particular, there are several different water tests that we can perform for you. We do these ourselves, we don't do the test, but we you know, we do the sampling and then provide it to the lab and they do all the fancy work for us. There are different ways and different tests out there. There's a simple what we call the bacteria test. If you're on a well we recommend that you have your well tested yearly, the water table is constantly changing down here and you can have the bacteria move into your well. Generally if you're on a well you also have a septic in your yard. So depending on how the water tables moving around, you could be bringing bacteria from your septic into your well. So you should keep an eye on those things. That test in particular is not a big deal. As a homeowner, you can actually do it yourself, you can get a hold of the Department of Health go down to the water department they will give you the equipment you need to take the sample you bring it to them and they'll test it for you for I think $50 or something like that. The test we do is basically the same. If we do it on site while we're there inspecting it we just charge $75 for the simple well test and it's going to test for E coli and coliform bacteria. And you know that's just basic health stuff so you don't get intestinal diseases and constantly have intestinal problems from basically the water you're drinking. Outside of that test. There is a full panel test that we can do. That's more of what's called the FHA /VA test. That one gets sent to Orlando lab there's actually only a few labs in the whole country that do the full panel water test. So that one that one is quite expensive and in fact that one goes it's it's in the $300/$400 range  but it's going to test obviously for the bacteria it also test for leads and nitrates and nitrates turbidity our urine magnesium pH like I said it's a full panel test but it gives you the full spectrum of what's in your water and then you can get really carried away with water testing as they're gonna call it out for specific items and that's where these these central labs come in and you name it we can test for it and it comes with dollar amount essentially the lab fees are expensive. The laboratory stuff gets pricey. So when we do lab testing and all these, you know, Mold Testing and Radon testing, most of the cost of that stuff is science cost labs, lab fees.

Charlie  

Yeah, yeah. Wow. Interesting, interesting stuff here. You know, I'm I'm completely fascinated again, by your knowledge, Rick. And I know we have listeners who may have questions, you know, may want to just learn a little bit more about what you cover, although this was very, very thorough. Would it be possible for some of our listeners to get in touch? And if so well?

Rick Kooyman  

Yeah, absolutely. Please, at any point, you can reach out to me I'd love to just talk to you and give you some info. If you think you're having issues, we would gladly come out and help you out in any way we can. 

You can reach me on email at Rick at www.TradeSecretsInspections.com. You can call me at 239-537-1186 that's direct number to me, call me anytime I take calls whenever I'm available to answer the phone

Charlie  

Alright, thanks again another awesome episode in the can and more importantly out there helping folks and we look forward to getting together in the next episode. 

Thanks for listening to the Trade Secrets Inspections podcast. To learn more about Trade Secrets Inspections, go to www.TradeSecretsInspections.com or call to 239-537-1186.

 Transcribed by https://otter.ai