Understanding Radon

A “curie” is named for Marie Curie, who actually coined the term ‘radioactivity’. The amount of radiation coming from radon gas is very small, and is measured as a trillionth of a curie; that is, a pico-curie (pCi). In a liter of air, 1 pCi results in about 2.2 radioactive disintegrations per minute. In the US, the average home concentration is 1.3 pCi/L.

Your personal breathing space, let’s say, is a 3-foot sphere around your head. That’s about 400 liters of air. At 1.3 pCi/L, that’s over 1,000 radioactive disintegrations per minute.

The EPA recommends getting your home fixed at 2.0 pCi/L, or 1,750 disintegrations per minute, and *strongly* recommends mitigation at 4.0 pCi/L, or 3,500 disintegrations per minute.

In a 2,000 square foot home those numbers jump to 65,000 at 1.3 pCi/L, 100,000 at 2.0 pCi/L, and 200,000 at 4.0 pCi/L.

Radon level…… Breathing space……. Home
1.3………………….1,144 ……………………64,788
2 ……………………1,760 ……………………99,673
4 ……………………3,520 ………………….199,346

The basic meaning from this? If you could see radon then the air around you would sparkle from all the radioactive decay. And the more you breathe in, the more likely you are to develop lung cancer over time.