Adventures in Home Buying

No, Radon Isn’t Teaming Up With Natural Gas

• Jim Troth

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If you’ve ever wondered whether you can “feel” radon or smell a warning before it becomes dangerous, this conversation will reset your radar with science, not scare tactics. We unpack what radon really is—a radioactive noble gas formed from decaying uranium in soil and rock—why it’s invisible to your senses, and how long-term exposure becomes a major lung cancer risk, especially for smokers. The goal isn’t panic; it’s precision: measure accurately, mitigate effectively, and move on with confidence.

We tackle one of the strangest internet myths head-on: the claim that radon reacts with natural gas to make people sick. Using first principles chemistry, we explain why radon’s inert nature means it doesn’t interact with mercaptan or methane. If you smell rotten eggs, that’s the added odorant doing its job, and while it can irritate sensitive people, it isn’t a radon cocktail. Along the way, we share a pivotal case that revealed the home hazard decades ago: a worker flagged by a Geiger counter whose house measured astronomical levels, leading to one of the earliest residential mitigations and a new understanding of indoor exposure.

You’ll also get practical guidance you can use today. We cover the 4.0 pCi/L action level, what a proper 48-hour test entails, why winter often drives higher readings due to frozen ground and closed windows, and what a typical mitigation system costs and achieves. We broaden the lens to indoor air quality in colder months—VOCs from new finishes, moisture and mold, and the prevalence of tiny natural gas leaks that still warrant a fix. By the end, you’ll know how to separate folklore from facts and how to protect your home with steps that are proven, affordable, and measurable.

If this helped clarify the noise around radon, subscribe, share with a friend who’s house hunting, and leave a quick review to help more listeners find solid, science-based guidance.

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SPEAKER_01:

Hey everybody, this is Jim, and of course Laura's here with me.

SPEAKER_02:

Hello, everybody.

SPEAKER_01:

Alright, so radon. Very popular in Ohio. Well, I don't know about popular, but very common. It is a common thing because just the geography, the and the rocks that are underneath the soil, they have uranium in them. Which over a million years, I don't I can't remember what the half-life is of uranium, but over course of time it breaks down into a couple different things. One of the things is radon gas, and that's what that breaks down to causes lung cancer. But radon is what they measure when we do testing.

SPEAKER_02:

Right, because that's the easiest way to test it.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, the other stuff is uh not not as easy to test for, but radon breaks down directly to those things, so it's it's directly correlated. Yes. So anyway, there's a lot of myths about radon. And we just heard a new one. We just heard a new one, which we'll add to this, but the typical ones is can I smell it? And no, it has no odor. We'll have people call and they'll what was it, Lord? They're they're feeling sick, they're having coughs, and they'll ask us respiratory. They'll ask us if it could be a radon.

SPEAKER_02:

That they had high radon, they haven't gotten a system put in yet. No.

SPEAKER_01:

No, radon, you will not smell it, it will not cause lung irritation, it can cause lung cancer down the road, but just m going to a room that has high radon, you're not gonna notice anything.

SPEAKER_02:

No, and not even for years. It's the lower levels for a longer period of time that cause the most problems in people. And if you smoke, it makes it worse.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, if you smoke cigarettes and you have high radon, the addition of smoking increases uh eight times more likely to get lung cancer versus that radon level by itself. Right. So, first of all, don't smoke, and then if you have the ability, get your house tested for radon and get it mitigated, which is not super expensive. It's not cheap. It average about thirteen, fifteen hundred dollars.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I think that's what I've heard recently.

SPEAKER_01:

So either way, it's far cheaper than getting lung cancer and losing losing work because you because you can't well you if you can't work, you lose your livelihood. That is far more expensive than a radon mitigation system. So you always get that mitigated if you have high levels.

SPEAKER_02:

Always.

SPEAKER_01:

Where Chern Ohio, it's four point zero or more picocures per liter, which is just some very small number of I guess interactions or breakdowns of the gas, the radioactive activity. So anyway, we're heard something new the other day.

SPEAKER_00:

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SPEAKER_01:

And Laura, why don't you describe it? It was on the internet, right?

SPEAKER_02:

Well, we did not read it. We went out to a house where a woman is sick and having issues. They had a new house that they had purchased, and when they moved in, she smelled something off. And they bring out the gas company, and the gas company finds a couple of gas leaks right in the bedroom where she'd been staying.

SPEAKER_01:

Natural gas?

SPEAKER_02:

I think it was natural gas.

SPEAKER_01:

Natural gas. Okay.

SPEAKER_02:

So somehow the husband decided to do research and found something online that said that radon and natural gas interact together to make people sick and cause whatever he couldn't explain it to me. He he said he'd read it on the internet. But the problem with that is that radon is what's called a noble gas, which means that it does not interact with anything. So, like nitrogen is a noble gas. That's why they use it to clean out refrigerant lines when they're doing HVAC systems, because anything that comes in after that won't react.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, because I think everybody knows if you mix ammonia and bleach, you're gonna make chlorine gas, and that is a bad thing that is bad around. But you can like nitrogen, you can blow that into a system and it's not gonna interact with anything, create anything new. Right. So radon is a noble gas, and for those people who still think it is a made-up substance, just to screw real estate deals or or to sell systems, it's it's on the periodic table of elements.

SPEAKER_02:

Has been on the periodic table of elements for a very long time.

SPEAKER_01:

It's it's about halfway down on the right size. It's it's um atomic symbol is RN. Yes. So it it is there, it's been there for over a hundred years.

SPEAKER_02:

So it's been known about, they just didn't realize it or understand exactly what the implications were of radon. At first, when they were studying all of this, they literally thought it was just miners that were impacted by it. They didn't realize that it came up into houses.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and tell that story. How they realize that hey, this radon can be an issue in houses.

SPEAKER_02:

So there was a gentleman that worked in a mine, and I believe it was a uranium mine. They were getting it set up. It was a store.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, it was a mine or they processed uranium. I don't know exactly.

SPEAKER_02:

My understanding was that that he they were helping set it up. So, like, there there wasn't much of an interaction with stuff at this point, but they regularly checked them with Geiger counters going in and out. And he had such high levels when they checked him that they thought he was stealing stuff. He's swearing up and down that he's innocent, that he didn't do any of this. So they go to the man's house. His levels in his house were over 5,000 for radon. And it was literally clinging to his clothes. There was that much radon in his house. So they actually kicked his family out. I think they sent him to a hotel, if I recall correctly, and that was the very first remediation, mitigation creation I know in the country, maybe even in the world, for houses that had high radon levels. So they sat there, tried to figure out ways to get this out, and then they got it low enough where they eventually allowed the family to move back in.

unknown:

Okay.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, so his clothes were radioactive.

SPEAKER_02:

His clothes were radioactive because there was such high levels in the house.

SPEAKER_01:

And and radon is a radioactive substance, but it breaks down to polonium, two versions of polonium, which is still radioactive.

SPEAKER_02:

So and that's what sticks to your lungs and causes the lung cancer.

SPEAKER_01:

Remember, I we have habitation investigation has a Geiger counter. We ended up never needing it. But we had some uh some lady called us, she was wanting to donate furniture to some location, maybe it was a recycling center. It was a recycling center. It was a recycling center. She could not donate it because it came up as being radioactive, and she never heard of such a thing. And but it could have been where that furniture, this old office furniture, was sitting, high radon levels, and over 10, 20 years, that radon broke down into polonium and settled on the furniture, and it stayed like that for who knows how long.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, we never um I never did find out if that was actually the the confirmation. That's what we told her we thought happened.

SPEAKER_01:

But I do have a Geiger counter, which I I next time we go to a museum, and I think they might have uranium glass, which is really cool. Yeah, it it's I don't think they make it anymore. I really don't know. But it is it's a cool kind of like a fluorescent green collar, but it is I'm bringing the Geiger counter next time just to see how high that is. So anyway.

SPEAKER_02:

So the only other thing that could possibly do anything in natural gas, they add a substance to it so that you can smell it because natural gas naturally is unsmellable.

SPEAKER_01:

Odorless. Odorless. I like unsmellable. Unsmellable.

SPEAKER_02:

It's it's odorless. So what do they add to that?

SPEAKER_01:

They add mercaptin, which kind of smells like sulfur.

SPEAKER_02:

Like rotten eggs.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, it's and that's it's a it's you'll know it. It's a distinct odor.

SPEAKER_02:

If you smell it, you will know there's a problem.

SPEAKER_01:

Now that stuff can cause some uh health issues, yeah. But it can be it's an irritant, so it can cause headaches, dizziness. Man, if you if you if you're like getting sick from it, like puking, you you've way too much in that in that area. But it could be if you're sensitive, it could be a little bit of an irritant, but you you would smell that in the natural gas. Because they add that to propane, also. Right. They add propane as well because it is odorless.

SPEAKER_02:

But once again, Mercaptin is not going to interact with radon and cause problems because radon is a noble gas and it doesn't interact with anything.

SPEAKER_01:

Correct.

SPEAKER_02:

So you would be reacting to the Mercaptin, not the combination. So whoever put that story out on the internet, and we've not seen it, we we genuinely have no clue who said that. They are either very misinformed and you should run the other direction, or they are trying to scare people into either a getting a radon system or b something with gas and you should still run the other way.

SPEAKER_01:

And it is surprising how many houses actually do have a rate. Um, I'm sorry, not well, here in Ohio, a lot of them have some have radon, but I was I was thinking natural gas leaks or gas line leaks. And a lot of those leaks are they're tiny, they will probably never cause an explosion unless the house was sealed up extremely tight and you got the slow leak going on forever, but the amount of gas sneaking in is so low, and there's always cracks and uh air exchanged outside, so it's never gonna build up. But it is amazing how many houses actually have a little gas line leak somewhere that's not causing any issues, but you want it's there.

SPEAKER_02:

You want it fixed.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, you don't want it to I don't know, maybe if that pipe has some vibration to it, will that gap get larger and start allowing more coming in? Don't know. But you just get that fixed. But yeah, radon, it's not gonna irritate your lungs, it's not gonna interact with any other gas or chemical. So you need if you want to know there's radon, you get have to have testing for radon specifically.

SPEAKER_02:

Yes. So it's a very simple test.

SPEAKER_01:

Yep. For Fearful State Ohio, you have to have 48 hours of testing data, and then that gets averaged out so you know your average uh radon level is because it does vary throughout the day.

SPEAKER_02:

And it also varies throughout seasons and it varies throughout storms.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, so it actually the winter is coming up. This is a good time to get your indoor air quality tested because as Laura will complain, it's getting cold out. Yes, I will, and so windows are not gonna be kept open, and so you're any radar gas is coming in, is gonna get trapped there, more likely. Also, the ground when it's frozen.

SPEAKER_02:

Less likelihood of escape.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, because always radar gas sneaking up through the soil and going out into the atmosphere. In the house, it comes up underneath the s in the basement typically or through the slab. That's your your that's the house's contact with the soil, so it comes up through there. But when the ground is frozen, that layer of of uh ice and snow is like a cap to the soil. So now the radon gas cannot come up through the outside soil as easily. So now it's easier for that gas to come up through the house, the soil, underneath the house, and then into the house. That's why you have higher levels in the house during the wintertime because closed windows, doors, and you have uh a little bit more of a chimney effect because the ground outside the house is capped.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

So I think I say on this one, but yeah, get this good time to have your house tested for indoor air quality, and that could be mold, radon, VOCs from aldehyde. VOCs. If you have a new house, like I would maybe we'll talk about this another time, but if you have done recent renovations to your house, new furniture, and carpet and new bedding. I would lean against doing that during the wintertime, but we'll talk about that later on. Yeah. All right, thank you, everybody. Bye bye.

Contributor

Jim Troth

Host
Contributor

Laura Troth

Host