Invisible radon gas common in area
Cancer agent may be plentiful in some local homes

By Patricia C. Stumb
Times Staff Writer
Printed: December 1, 2002; The Decatur Daily News, online edition

The view from Matt and Leigh Ann Shook's back porch in the Blossomwood neighborhood is stunning.

Their back yard is at the base of Monte Sano, and the land adjoining theirs is property of the Land Trust of Huntsville & North Alabama. The vista will never be obscured.

However, as the couple - proud parents of 9-month-old Sam - learned a few weeks ago, this location comes with a high price: Their home for more than a decade has five times the amount of radon gas deemed safe by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Radon, the second-leading cause of lung cancer, seeps from the ground into homes, whether the foundation is built on a slab, crawl space or basement, which is the case with the Shooks' house.

It's hit or miss. One home can be steeped in the colorless, odorless gas, and the house next door won't be. But if a house sits atop land with caves and fissures underneath - like many in North Alabama do - the likelihood of radon increases.

''I feel like someone should have grabbed me by the shoulders and shaken me and said, 'Radon can kill you,' '' Leigh Ann Shook said. ''I've been breathing the air in this house for 10 years. My baby has been breathing it his entire life.

''We had a dog die last year of cancer. How do we know we haven't already damaged our lungs?''

The good news is that houses - even 50-year-old ones like the Shooks' - can be fixed so that radon doesn't collect inside. The work typically costs Prolonged exposure damages lungs, leaving them susceptible to malignancies Radon Continued from page A1 a few hundred dollars but can cost thousands.

In recent months Decatur adopted a new building code that requires all new homes have radon-resistant systems built in. That's cheaper than putting one in later.

Either way, it's cheaper than lung cancer.

High levels of radon here

The Cooperative Extension Service office in Madison County has one of the most active radon programs in the state, if not the country. That's because radon is found here in levels deemed dangerous more often than most places in the state.

The land beneath Madison County has cracks and fissures. Shale, limestone and porous rock allow subterranean gases to ease their way to the surface. Those geological circumstances are known as karst, and the area is full of it.

This is a problem because uranium - which decays and emits radon gas - is also part of the geological equation here. Even though it can't be seen, tasted or smelled, radon gas is permeating the ground and seeping into the air.

Radon is everywhere, but in most cases is diluted to harmless levels in the atmosphere. However, if it leaches through a basement, crawl space or concrete foundation, it can collect in an enclosed space like a house. Prolonged exposure damages the lining of the lungs, leaving them susceptible to malignancies.

The radon awareness effort began in Madison County in 1997, and Sabrina Lyle has been running it since 1999.

When she started out, most people greeted her with a blank stare as she implored them to test their homes with a simple, $13 kit. In the past three years, she said, the stares have gotten less blank. Now, they're cautious and proactive.

''The concern has grown enormously, but that doesn't mean that everyone in Madison County has tested their homes,'' Lyle said. ''And it doesn't mean that everyone who has tested positive has put in a mitigation system.''

Lyle said of the 10,000 tests run in the county since 1997, 34 percent have come back positive, meaning there are four or more picocuries of radon per liter of air, and the EPA deems anything above 4 too high.

"Hazel Green has relatively few homes with high radon levels, but go a few miles down the road to Meridianville, and almost one in two homes have tested for excessive radon,'' Lyle said. ''That's how capricious this thing is.''

The Alabama Department of Public Health has released information that says one picocurie of radon roughly equates to the lung cancer risk of two cigarettes per day. Even at the ''safe level'' of four picocuries per liter, residents could be taking in the risk equivalent of almost eight cigarettes a day. It's also the equivalent of 400 chest X-rays a month.

For the Shooks, their reading of 21 picocuries of radon per liter of air represents 48 cigarettes a day. For 10 years.

Not every smoker gets lung cancer, and not every person who lives in a radon-laden home does, either. But Leigh Ann Shook gets upset that her family has been exposed to that. A neighbor mentioned to her in passing a few years ago that his house had tested high for radon. She didn't know what that could mean, and she didn't ask.

All it took was getting her own results to put her on the offensive.

''I freaked out when I saw how we tested,'' she said. ''I felt doomed. Especially since we have a baby now, my health and longevity are very important to me.''

She's spreading the news to her neighbors. While strolling Sam in the neighborhood the other day, Shook told a neighbor about her radon problem and urged him to check out his own home.

''He said to me, 'What's radon?' '' she said. ''After I explained it to him, he thanked me.''

She doesn't know if it will prompt him to get a test kit.

Matt Shook, who works in electronics at Quantum Technology, is planning the mitigation system. It's an involved project that includes planting a large piece of PVC pipe in the ground beneath the house along with an exhaust fan to blow the gas away. Typically, the top of the PVC pipe comes out of the home's roof.

Lyle and the Extension Service have hosted three workshops to teach construction workers and homeowners how to install the systems. Obviously, it's easier and cheaper to put in the system while the house is under construction.

Lyle said if polyethelene sheeting is placed on the soil before a foundation is laid, it greatly reduces the amount of radon that can filter into a home. And if the PVC pipe is installed during construction, it can be hidden in the wall next to the sewer exhaust pipe.

In this phase, the mitigation efforts would cost between $200 and $500. It can be two to four times that after construction.

Decatur passes legislation

This past summer, Decatur became the first city in the state to pass legislation requiring all new homes under construction to have radon-reduction systems. Initially, city officials and builders didn't love the idea of more regulations being placed on contractors.

One reason the radon-reduction law passed was because of Dr. Lane Mathis Price, the medical director of the Decatur Oncology Center.

Price has witnessed the ravages of cancer during her 26-year career, but it's just been recently that she saw a way to become an effective, vocal advocate. When she read the radon issue kept coming up at council meetings and the council continued to table the matter, she decided to speak up.

She told the council that she'd just signed four death certificates on lung-cancer patients, and two of them had never smoked. Then she asked the council what the holdup was.

She kept the pressure on the council, reinforcing the statistic that up to 30,000 Americans die every year of radon-caused lung cancer.

The only health effect which has been definitively linked with radon exposure is lung cancer.

The EPA says while producing no immediate symptoms, radon is believed to contribute to between 7,000 and 30,000 lung cancer deaths each year. Smokers are at higher risk, and lung cancer would usually occur years (five to 25) after exposure.

''In my opinion, there's no worse malignancy,'' Price said. ''Unless it's caught in the very early stages, life expectancy is six months to two years. It is a horrible, horrible disease. Most of us have known someone who had it.

''If putting in a radon-reduction system while a house is being built can cut back on the number of people dying from lung cancer, well, I can't understand why it isn't mandatory everywhere.''

In Decatur, 16 percent of homes tested since 1997 had unacceptably high radon levels. The figure in Madison County: 34 percent.

Radon can be conquered

Lyle is out there, talking with contractors, students, bankers and real estate agents. She's getting the word out that while radon is bad, it can be conquered. One house at a time.

She is working with the state health department to make sure the parents of each baby born at Huntsville Hospital receives a coupon for a free radon test kit, since newborns' lungs are especially vulnerable.

Lyle said the topic of mandatory radon-resistant systems being built in new homes has been discussed in Huntsville and Madison County, but she doesn't know when, or if, it will come up for a vote.

"Right now, our code doesn't demand it, but if an individual wanted it, he could require his builder to do radon, and there would be an additional cost,'' said Hulan Smith, director of the inspection department for the city of Huntsville. "Right now there's not many that I know of in the city of Huntsville that are doing it." He said he believes people whose houses are built on a slab rather than some other kind of foundation would most need protection.

Smith said there are questions as to how dangerous radon really is. The EPA recognizes those disagreements. The agency's Web site notes a few scientists have questioned whether low radon levels, such as those found in residences, increase the risk of lung cancer because some small studies of radon and lung cancer in residences have produced varied results.

Yet Lyle's got her fingers crossed that radon protection will someday be required.

''You've just got to make people understand that this thing they can't smell, taste or see can kill them. And you've got to let them know that it doesn't have to.''