Madison County's geology allows deadly radon to seep into our houses - but it's not hard to fix

By Patricia C. Stumb
Times Staff Writer
Printed: June 20, 2000; The Huntsville Times, online edition

What makes the Madison County landscape lovely also makes it deadly.

Above ground, hills and small mountains are stunning decoration. Under ground, that pattern appears in reverse. Some 3,900 caves lie below the surface of northern Alabama, adding intrigue as well as creating conditions favorable for lung cancer.

There are cracks and fissures in the earth beneath Huntsville. Limestone, shale and porous rock allow subterranean gases to ease their way to the surface. Those geological circumstances are known as karst, and this area is full of it.

This is a problem because uranium - which decays and emits noxious radon gas - is also part of the geological equation here. Even though we can't see it or taste it or smell it, radon gas is permeating the ground and seeping into the air.

For the most part, the radon is harmless. It becomes diluted in the atmosphere.

But if it is allowed to quietly leach through your basement or concrete foundation or crawl space, it can collect in your house. And if your house is well-built and air-tight, it can be even worse. The radon's got nowhere to go, so you inhale it, day after day.

Perhaps even year after year.

And then maybe, if you are one of the unfortunate 15,000 Americans each year, you will be told that you have inexplicable lung cancer. Chances are, you aren't even a smoker.

This is why Sabrina Hill wore overalls to work today. That's why she's wearing a helmet light and trudging through a cave whose mud floor is so gummy it could suck the hiking boots right off her feet.

She's in Shelta Cave off Pulaski Pike, assisting a knowledgeable caver with a radon test. She's learned a lot about caving in the past six months, but still, Hill - an employee with Madison County's Extension Office whose full-time job is radon education and mitigation - would never come down here without him.

Paul Meyer is a NASA employee and conservation chairman of the Huntsville Grotto, the local chapter of the National Speleological Society. He's volunteered time and expertise to underground radon testing, and the results he's helped isolate have been startling.

In Shelta Cave, the tests have shown 400 to 500 picocuries of radon per liter of air; the Environmental Protection Agency recommends anything over 4 pCi/L of radon be mitigated.

''A level above 4 pCi/L means the inhabitants of that home are subject to the carcinogenic equivalent of 400 chest x-rays a month,'' Hill said.

Hill and Meyer probably aren't in any danger of inhaling too much carcinogenic gas during their occasional visits to the cave. It's prolonged exposure that makes radon harmful.

The person to worry about is the woman who doesn't work so she spends most of her time inside her house. The honeycombed ground beneath her has allowed radon gas to be an invisible houseguest for the past 20 years.

''I was making a presentation earlier this year, and I was explaining how difficult it was to encourage people to test their homes for something they can't see but that can kill them,'' Hill said. ''Afterwards, a guy came up and said that if I told people that radon levels could be linked to problems with their manhood, I wouldn't have a test kit left.''

A survey by the Environmental Protection Agency showed that in Madison, Jefferson and Shelby counties, 25 percent of the homes tested had radon levels above what is considered a minimal risk. In statistics offered by the County Extension Office, Madison County - which is in the "hot zone" of the EPA Radon Danger Map - appears to be the most affected.

In a 19-month period between 1997 and 1999, the Extension Office knows of 287 radon tests being administered in Madison County. Of those, 134 tests revealed radon levels in excess of 4 pCi/L (47 percent). In Jefferson County, 10 percent of the 150 tests showed similarly high levels, and 13 percent of Shelby County's 76 tests did.

In Alabama, we're the worst of the worst.

''By far, we have the most radon in the state,'' Hill said. ''South Madison County, where there's sand and silt instead of karst - it isn't as troubled as the northern part of the county. In Madison, Hazel Green, Meridianville and Monte Sano, there is karst beneath. Some houses in Monte Sano have tested 300 pCi/L. That's almost as much as it is in the cave.''

Hill said the EPA and the state health department have recently released a startling prediction: In the next year, 2,000 north Alabama residents will be diagnosed with lung cancer, and 10 percent of those cancers will be attributable to radon.

''That's 200 people,'' she said. ''We have got to get the word out because those 200 people deserve to know what's going on and what they can do to protect themselves.''

Hill describes her vocation as ''tricky.'' First, there are budget concerns. She said government leaders have more tangible problems to solve, so funding for radon eradication isn't as thorough as she'd like.

Second, people don't really want to hear what she has to say.

''People don't want to hear about something else that's going to kill them,'' she said. ''But this is something that is so avoidable. It takes a little bit of time, a little bit of money. But when you compare that to being able to breathe and having your life, it certainly seems justifiable.''

What Hill is trying to do is get people to test for the deadly gas. Kits can be obtained from her office for $12.75 (which includes laboratory fees) or from home improvement businesses. If the test reveals an excess of radon gas, then the homeowner should mitigate.

That's what happened at the headquarters for the National Speleological Society, located off Pulaski Pike and atop Shelta Cave. The NSS office had a radon reading of 83 pCi/L, more than 20 times the acceptable level.

So they mitigated. In a joint effort of the Southern Regional Radon Training Center in Auburn (which trains builders, real estate brokers and general contractors in the art of radon mitigation), the NSS and the Alabama Cooperative Extension System, the building was mitigated as a demonstration site.

It took four days in early March.

Mitigation is annoying but doable. It involves pulling up baseboards, caulking and putting the boards back.

The other step is to create a vacuum under the slab foundation to suck out the tainted air beneath. A 4-inch PVC pipe was installed in the floor and then out of the building via a wall in the building's interior. A fan was attached to the top of the pipe to draw out the radon, allowing it to rise from the soil and out into the air. Once in the atmosphere, the gas dissipates.

''The purpose of a demonstration site is to allow the public to see a finished mitigation,'' she said. ''It can be a weekend project. Get some buddies to help, and have a barbecue when it's over.''

On July 8, the extension office is bringing in a professional from the Southeast Regional Radon Training Center in Auburn to tell homeowners how it's done. The class is free, and it will last three to four hours. It will be held at either the extension office on Cook Avenue or at Alabama A&M University, depending on how many people sign up for it.

Hill said it is something of a pilot program for the EPA, teaching homeowners how to mitigate their own houses.

But wouldn't it just be easier to radon-proof a house when it's being built?

Of course, but builders don't have to, so usually they don't. Hill 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.

There's a two-fold reason some builders don't automatically do the precautionary work: home buyers don't ask for it, and there's no hard ''proof'' that the problem is a real one.

Home builder Joe Murphy of Joe Murphy & Associates said a client hasn't asked him about radon in more than 10 years, back when ''there was that radon scare in the '80s.''

Steve Steele of Steve Steele General Contracting Inc. said he'll test his houses when a buyer asks him to. He estimates four out of his last 100 home sales have involved such a request. None of those four had unacceptable radon levels, he said.

''It's done at the customer's request,'' he said. ''Most people wouldn't want to pay for the extra cost of (adding in radon-proofing features), even though it's not that expensive. To rough it in a house under construction is less than $1,000. But that money is for something they can't see.''

Hill hopes that as people become more aware of radon's threat here, it will become a customary question during a house search. She hopes real estate agents and builders will see the attraction of being able to market a house as radon-safe.

Tennessee has laws that require attention to radon. In Pulaski, Tenn., about 40 miles from Huntsville, an elementary school is mitigating its campus after tests revealed radon levels exceeded 4 pCi/L.

Alabama has no such law.

While she'd love to see the Legislature do something about that, legislation is not the most pressing matter on her mind. Right now, she wants something simpler. She wants people to spend 13 bucks on a home test.

Radon facts

• Radon is a radioactive gas having no odor, taste or color.
• Radon is derived from the radioactive decay of uranium and is used in cancer treatment.
• Radon can be found in earth and rock beneath houses, in well water and in building materials.
• The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that radon contributes to between 7,000 and 30,000 lung cancer deaths each year. Smokers are at a higher risk of developing radon-induced lung cancer.
• Once inhaled, radon emits tiny bursts of energy called alpha particles, which can harm sensitive lung tissue by damaging the cells' DNA. Few lung cancer patients live beyond five years of initial diagnosis.
• Homeowners can test for radon by using a kit from the County Extension Office that costs $12.75, at 819 Cook Avenue, 532-1578; home improvement businesses also sell kits.
• Women are more often affected by radon than men because they usually spend more time inside the house.
• Better construction can contribute to the problem; radon comes in from beneath the floor, and it cannot escape from an air-tight house.
• Mitigation is recommended if 4 picocuries of radon per liter of air are detected. While that level is roughly equivalent to 400 chest x-rays per month, the 4 pCi/L was set as a reasonably achievable level using available and affordable technology