Get your home tested for radon

How would you like to smoke half a pack of cigarettes a day without ever putting a cigarette in your mouth? Worse yet, how would like your kids or grandkids to smoke without lighting up? That’s what was happening to my wife and me in the three years we have been retired and living east of Shell. It turns out that our house had elevated levels of radon. Radon is a radioactive gas that is invisible and has no odor or taste. It is the biproduct of the natural decay of uranium. In high enough concentrations, it can have a negative impact on a person’s health. In fact, according to the U.S. Surgeon General, it is the leading cause of lung cancer in people who don’t smoke. Recent assessments by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) suggest that annual U.S. deaths from radon-induced lung cancer hovers around those attributed to leukemia and lymphoma at just over 21,000. Several decades of research supports this conclusion.