It's odorless, it's colorless, and it's the second leading cause of lung cancer in the United States.
Our area is a hot zone for the highest levels of radon in the country. The EPA recommends that schools test for radon, but in Iowa and Illinois, they're not required to do so.
A KWQC investigation uncovered that most schools don't do the recommended testing, leaving kids at risk of exposure.
It's easy for radon to seep into a structure, whether it's a house, a business or a school. Radon seeps upward from the ground into buildings with cracks the foundation, through wells, and even by way of sump pumps. Once the cancer-causing gas infiltrates the air inside a building, it can become trapped there.
While it's easy for radon to become trapped inside a building, it's not as easy to get it out. Especially if radon is trapped inside a school.
"About 70% of the homes I test in Iowa will test high," said licensed radon tester Mark Crowley. But he said those high numbers can always be lowered; "I've never seen a number that can't be fixed. There's no number that scares me really."
The EPA recommends that action is taken to fix a radon problem if levels reach 4.0 .
"A house at 4.0 picocuries is equal to a half a pack a day smoking habit," Crowley said. While Crowley routinely tests homes for radon, he's never tested a school. Partially because schools rarely ask him to.
"there's no outrage associated with it like there would be if it was carbon monoxide or some other gas."
KWQC found out that there arpCi/L or higher several reasons why schools don't test for radon:
"Some of it is financial," Crowley said. "There is an expense to it because of the sheer number of test monitors you would have to use, the labor time involved in placing the monitors, retrieving the monitors, mailing away to a laboratory."
A radon test can be purchased at a hardware store for $10 to $15. But oftentimes there's an added cost to send the completed test to a lab, and that can cost roughly $30.
School officials would also have to set the test up in multiple locations around the school in order for the results to be accurate. So, that multiplies the cost.
"In a 30 room classroom you're going to be around that $2,000 mark," Crowley said.
It costs thousands of dollars to test, but that's not the only hold-up. Testing a school is also an organizational nightmare.
"you've got uncontrollability," Crowley said. "For a residential test we want to maintain closed-house conditions. So to tell a single owner to close the doors and windows, that's very easy." In order for the tests to be accurate, they cannot be disturbed. They can't be touched and, if someone opens a door or window, that changes the air quality.
"To tell 400 students that we've got to keep the windows closed, we can't move the monitors, we can't touch them, you lose some of the control of the testing capabilities."
Testing a school for radon is hard to do, but it's not impossible. Crowley suggests testing over a holiday, when the school is closed, so the monitors won't be disturbed.
If tests show radon levels of 4.0 pCi/L or higher, a mitigation system is recommended. Once a mitigation system is installed, air coming up from the ground is vented through a fan system, instead of becoming trapped inside the building. Air is then vented away from the property.
But mitigation systems are oftentimes more expensive than the testing process. It's costs anywhere from $2,500 to $5,000 to mitigate an 8,000 sq. ft. school, depending on how much radon is found and where.
But many schools don't make it to mitigation because they're not forced to test in the first place. Mark Crowley believes there is a lack of outrage;
"If there was a bunch of kids dropping dead from cancer, then all of a sudden there's outrage associated with it."
And as long as testing is only recommended by the government, schools don't have to do it.
