A standard search for Radon would have shown what Stax wrote. What you should be considering is are there methods for anyone sleeping in the basement to escape if something would block the exit. What is called an Egress Window which is a window large enough for a person to exit is needed. The best ones are the ones that the wall is cut down so that the person can step up or over with a built in ladder metal to climb out of the window well. Not some of the tiny ones that I see in many houses. This was reinforced two years ago when my neighbor's house went up in flames and she thought her son was trapped in the basement. He was not but seeing her waiting for the fire personnel to come tell her they had found his body is repeated too many times especially during the winter months.

Current Resident-

1) To answer your question about safety levels, here is a useful pamphlet from a reliable government source: https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2016-02/documents/2012_a_citizens_guide_to_radon.pdf

You need to appreciate that you can't get it to zero because it's all around us, including outside. Millions of homes have radon, and, while no one can tell you there is a bright line between "safe" levels and "unsafe" levels, you can get it pretty low through mitigation, and feel reasonably comfortable that it's not an issue for the occupants. If you read through the pamphlet, you will have a good understanding about this problem and its solutions from a neutral entity that does not have a vested interest in selling you something.

2) No, radon has no odor. If you are smelling something, it's another source.

Stax I was addressing the OP and not your expertise which does not matter unless used in a professional capacity. Too many people take the easy way and ask a question when typing in a few words will provide the information they want.

If it was mitigated and the levels continually test ok, it is considered safe to use the area to live in, sleep in etc. Yes, it can go to other levels in the house if it is extremely high on the lowest level, but if it has been mitigated, it won't be on the second level if its not on the first. It comes up from the bottom, so when it is mitigated in the basement, it takes care of the entire building. It does not have a smell, it is not from a fuel tank. It comes from the breakdown uranium in soil.

YES I know what radon is, where it comes from (not oil tanks - that was mentioned only as a nother possible source of the odor). If I could go back to my op to edit to make that clear I would. My question was do I assume acceptable readings mean its "safe" to have living quarters there vs occasional use. From the epa info (thanks!) it sounds like an "acceptable" reading is still above what a normal, non-radon affected environment would be - so I dont know, still doesnt sound ideal to me but may be good enough..

People tell us all the time that things like a certain amt of pesticide in your food is OK for you, within govt guidelines.... but still we may perceive some risk there and choose to avoid them. Thats what Im trying to get at, what is the risk aside from what govt guidelines say I simply cannot afford to spend a few hundred thousand on a house and find later that I cant, or dont want to use it as I want to. Now is the time to gather info and make that choice.

BTW may I respectfully suggest that if a reader does not like the question, please just move on to another of the thousands of postings which Houzz receives each day. No need to spend any time telling people you dont want to answer the question. IMHO a question to clarify meaning o about radon readings a HOuz basement forum.info is entirely appropriate

Good Points Kudzu. Im a realtor, and I have to laugh when people are concerned with radon while they have a cigarette hanging out of their mouths.

Where was your radon test done? Usually they are done on the living level. You could have a radon test done in the basement and find out if it tests high. They aren’t expensive.

I get it. We were told (at closing, mind you) that our drinking water had an "acceptable" level of lead after remediation. That's a hard concept to wrap your brain around. I mean, lead doesn't ever leave your body, it just accumulates. So, it's a personal choice--my husband would feel okay drinking it, but we drink spring water from a local (tested) spring instead of out of our tap. As for the radon, we were surprised when friends of our related how they were given the money to remediate the radon in the house they were buying by the seller at closing.....but chose not to do the remediation. To each, his own.

Testing levels below 4 are deemed safe for normal living.

Pretty much as simple as that.

Actually, it's not that simple. Here is what the Environmental Protection Agency says:

"Fix the home if the radon level is 4 picocuries per liter (pCi/L) or higher. Radon levels less than 4 pCi/L still pose a risk and, in many cases, may be reduced."

Do they describe what risk that is?

The point is that there is no magic cutoff for things like asbestos exposure, lead in your blood, or radon in the air. Less is always better, and very low levels pose rather low risk. But no one can responsibly tell you that if you lower the radon level in your home to, say 3 pCi/L, it's "safe." Different people respond to hazardous exposures differently, part of which can be genetics. Radon is hazardous because it can cause lung cancer, but so can other things, like smoking and other environmental pollutants. Having a history of smoking is a major contributing factor in analyzing risk from radon. It's not easy to summarize all this, but, if you want to look at relative risks, this is a useful reference:

https://www.epa.gov/radon/health-risk-radon#head

It's also important to remember that you can't reduce your radon risk to zero because there is even an outdoor level of about 0.4 pCi/L, and no indoor remediation system, no matter how good, will get it to zero.

All this makes it hard for people to make a decision on what they feel comfortable with in their homes. As I said previously, we all face lots of risks every day, but some of them we are more comfortable ignoring, such as traveling by car, or exposure to sunlight, or breathing the air.

One "fact" that I have always had a problem with is the one that states that 21000 deaths occur each year due to radon. I have never seen how this study was performed, nor how a doctor can diagnose lung or stomach or mouth cancer was caused by exposure to radon. I personally know a couple people who died of lung cancer who were not living in a home with radon and who were not smokers.

Anybody else know how this number became "fact"?

ncrealestateguy-

It's done by looking at vast amounts of medical and scientific data from a wide variety of sources over a period of many years. It's not a single "study." And I'm not an epidemiologist, though I have worked with them, and can tell you that there is no simple way to summarize how these analyses are done because risk assessments can be hundreds of pages long. You're right that people get cancer from different sources, and the science and art of risk assessment is to separate out the factors that are responsible, and provide the best conclusions based on available, credible data. People always challenge and argue about the validity of risk assessments, but unless we start locking people in laboratories for their whole lives so we can study them and control their exposures, we have to rely on assessments that are based on analysis, inference, and best available science.

That's what I figured... it's a guess. Perhaps an educated guess.

Kind of like the stat that staged home will sell "x" number of days faster and for "x" number of dollars more. It is impossible to validate this fact with a scientific study.

ncrealestateguy-

You’re right, it’s not a “fact,” and environmental scientists would never think of it that way. It is, however, an extremely sophisticated estimate that took years to arrive at using a variety of national and international studies and complex epidemiological modeling. Actual, annual U.S. deaths from radon aren’t 21,000: they might be several thousand higher or lower, but the analysis is reliable enough to conclude that this is the right order of magnitude, and that means it merits the attention it’s getting.

I appreciate that not everyone has a background in how this work is done, but, before you choose to be dismissive of the result by allowing that it might be an “educated guess,” I suggest you check out the sources of information that contributed to the radon assessment work and read some of the materials in the link I provided above. If you do, you'll see that the results don't come about from guesses, educated or otherwise. Here is just one of the contributing studies from The British Medical Journal:

https://www.bmj.com/content/330/7485/223.long#

I too am dismissive to this claim because there is no way to know if radon was the only factor which is the reason it should be named as cause of death or one of many factors. Is there a particular type of disease or cancer that is only caused by radon? Lung cancer that is mentioned has many causes some unknown. Unless there is a way of claiming a certain number of deaths is caused by it anyone could label any amount of deaths caused by it. The article is not scientific enough for me.

maifleur-

I understand where you're coming from, and I'd be dismissive, too, if that is how these numbers were arrived at. But they don't arise from some doctors guessing that radon was the cause of death in particular patients, and then coming up with a total number.

Epidemiological studies use statistics and complex mathematical modeling, as well as knowledge of medicine and toxicology, and these techniques and subjects don't lend themselves to simplified explanations that can be summarized in a forum post here. If you really want to see how this works, you'll need to do some reading like the link I just posted above to the paper in The British Medical Journal. That paper synthesizes the data and results from 13 prior European studies covering nine countries and had a very large sample size. The investigators used measurements and medical statistics collected over decades that correlated excess deaths from lung cancer with radon levels, and used statistical tools to remove other potential causes of cancer from the analysis. The results of the analysis were consistent in that they did not differ significantly with study, age, sex, or smoking.

It's fine to be skeptical, but you need to take a little time to look at how these results are arrived at so you can make an informed decision about what exactly you are being dismissive about. It looks like you responded to me a couple of minutes after I posted the BMJ link, so I am hoping you're not saying you read the whole thing that quickly before discounting it :-)

Kudzu9, thanks for the link... I will read with interest tomorrow.

ncrealestateguy-

Thanks for considering that. Apart from the statistical methodologies, I think it's fairly clearly written for such a complex and large study, and I hope you can make a judgment for yourself on whether what is done in this type of analysis: 1) goes beyond the educated guess stage for you, and 2) better explains than I could how they draw conclusions about radon when there are several factors that contribute to lung cancer.

Kudzu9,

Again, thanks for the link... that is the type of scientific study I expected was out there but no one would ever direct me too. (And I probably never bothered to look too hard) I studied Biology in college, took numerous statistic classes, and was one of the best in my class for writing up lab reports. I loved applying statistical analysis to my results and determining if there was a significant difference between the controls and the study group.

The study referenced to did have a large sample size. My only beef would be that they used results from 13 other studies that I would assume all used slightly differing approaches. I don't understand how they accounted for this.

But, my argument for this is over, as I now see how it is possible to derive such results from such an abstract hypothesis. Thanks.

Thanks for looking at that and responding so thoughtfully. There are actually a number of other analyses besides that one that were also incorporated into the work that produced the "21000 number." But I thought that one was fairly representative of the methodology used in competent risk assessments.

Radon is a radioactive gas with no taste, smell, or color. This means the human senses alone cannot detect it. You can’t know whether your home has unhealthy levels of the gas unless you have tested. If you want information on how to test your home for radon, choose a qualified radon mitigation contractor to fix your home

Does anyone else see Radon levels on the upper floors (the 3rd floor is higher than 2nd) and higher than at times than in the basement? Is this all stack effect and if so - what can I do looking to add an HRV to the system I have in place...The levels are low but I want to do all I can.

I am using the Airthings monitor to keep track of changes.