radon

The Invisible Houseguest: Should You Worry About Radon in Your Home?

Sophie Tseng Pellar BSc — Fri, 15 Aug 2025 10:00:00 +0000

There may be an uninvited guest in your home. It doesn’t eat your snacks, hog the remote, or leave the toilet seat up—but it might be slowly increasing your risk of lung cancer. Meet radon: a colourless, odourless, tasteless radioactive gas that may be living in your basement rent-free.

So… what exactly is it?

Non-smoker’s lung cancer and the hidden link

Nancy Liu-Sullivan, PhD — Fri, 31 Dec 2021 19:08:52 +0000

The link between cigarette smoking and lung cancer is widely acknowledged. But not everyone who smokes gets lung cancer and not everyone who gets lung cancer is a smoker. How does one contract the so-called non-smoker’s lung cancer? The answer, one might say, is blowing in the wind. And that wind may be blowing a gas called radon.

Fujian Province is riddled with radon

Joe Schwarcz PhD — Mon, 10 Apr 2017 15:36:47 +0000

Fujian Province in south-east China has the highest incidence of respiratory and gastrointestinal tract cancers in the whole country. The culprit in all likelihood is well water which is contaminated by high levels of radioactive radon gas. Radon is a breakdown product of uranium, an element commonly found in many rocks, such as granite. About 1 in 500 people will contract cancer by drinking a liter of radioactive water a day. The tragedy is that the problem can be solved relatively easily. If air is bubbled through the water, the radon dissipates! In North America drinking water is monito