Are YOU at risk from odourless gas that creeps into your home and gives you lung cancer? Some areas of the UK are more at risk – use this map to find out if you should be worried, and the steps that’ll keep you safe
After living in his house in Street, Somerset, for three decades, David Wilson moved to nearby Bridgwater and last year put the former family home on the rental market – only to discover that the property where he and his wife Tes had raised their two children had dangerously high levels of radioactive radon gas.‘The letting agent told us that the house (which is 70 years old) was built in a high-risk area, so we got it tested,’ says David.This showed radon levels of 2,200 – more than ten times the safe limit of 200 becquerels per cubic metre (or Bq/m³, a unit that measures radioactive decay) set by the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA).Radon forms underground when uranium in rocks and soil breaks down into a gas. It can then seep into buildings and homes through cracks and gaps in the ground.‘We’d lived there for 30 years and had never heard anything about radon,’ says David, 59, an electrician. ‘It was such a shock. The council knew the area was high‑risk but nobody told us.’David paid for engineers to install an extraction pump under the floor to remove the radon.‘It brought the levels down, but it shouldn’t have been up to us to discover it by accident,’ he says.The problem is that, unless buildings are specifically tested for radon, it can go undetected because it is odourless.Worryingly, only 7 per cent of households in higher-risk areas have ever tested their homes for the gas, a survey by the UKHSA in 2022 revealed.The risk is cancer – exposure to 200Bq/m³ of radon for eight hours a day is roughly equivalent to 112 chest X-rays a year: radon breaks down into radioactive particles, which can be inhaled deep into the lungs, damaging the cells.For every 100Bq/m³ increase over the average home radon levels, the risk of lung cancer rises by 16 per cent, according to the World Health Organisation. Indeed, radon is the second major cause of lung cancer in the UK after smoking – with more than 1,100 deaths a year, revealed a seminal study published in the BMJ in 2009.
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Rebecca Coates, former chair of the UK Radon Association, says the problem is that no one is checking radon exposure for people in their home – an issue particularly for people who work remotelyRadon is found throughout the UK. While the levels in some areas are negligible, there are hotspots (see box, above right) – in England. These include Cornwall, Devon and Somerset, where David lives.Houses built on granite or limestone are most at risk; in flats, the risk is greatest for basements and ground-floor rooms, particularly those directly over soil or rock and with poor airflow (flats on upper floors are generally safer because radon enters from the ground).In very well-ventilated spaces the gas can escape harmlessly, but if air is trapped inside – for example, because windows aren’t opened, the house is insulated or if it has double glazing – the gas can build up inside.New research shows the danger is greater in winter when homes are sealed against the cold: a study in the journal Environmental Monitoring and Assessment found that indoor concentrations or radon were up to 50 per cent higher in winter than summer. Dr Tracy Gooding, radon group leader at the UKHSA, told Good Health that levels tend to rise in winter because ‘ventilation is reduced’, and warm air inside rises and escapes through the roof, pulling colder air (and radon gas) up from the ground through cracks and floors, in what scientists call the ‘stack effect’.But experts warn that our culture of working from home could also now be exposing many more people to radon, increasing their risk of lung cancer.‘If you spend all day at home – as opposed to going out to work for seven or eight hours in the day – it can lead to increased exposure,’ says Dr Matthew Watson, a consultant lung cancer specialist at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust. ‘It’s a significant risk. Radon is a well-known risk factor for lung cancer.’Rebecca Coates, former chair of the UK Radon Association, adds: ‘If people now work at home, they’re potentially spending 24 hours a day in the same building.’ Are you in a radon hotspot? According to the UK Health Security Agency radon map, these are the top hotspots around the UK, ranked from the highest. They are ranked according to the estimated share of homes in an area that have indoor radon levels above the recommended 200Bq/m³.England: Cornwall, Devon, Derbyshire, Somerset, Dorset, Cumbria, Northamptonshire, Oxfordshire, Shropshire, Lincolnshire.Wales: Gwynedd, Powys, Ceredigion, Pembrokeshire, Conwy.Scotland: Aberdeenshire, Angus, Argyll & Bute, Dumfries & Galloway, Perth & Kinross.Northern Ireland: Down, Antrim, Armagh, Fermanagh, Tyrone. The problem is that ‘no one is checking radon exposure for them. By contrast, every workplace is legally required to assess the building for radon risk (if they are in a radon-affected area).’ Indeed, people who shifted to working from home after Covid increased their annual radon exposure by 19.2 per cent, according to a 2023 study in the journal Scientific Reports, based on more than 15,000 readings from a major radon study in Canada.In fact, anyone who spends long hours indoors – including parents at home, carers, pre-school children and retirees – receives a greater cumulative dose of radon, according to the UKHSA.‘If you’re inside most of the day, it really does have a huge impact,’ says Owen Wells, an assistant professor in genome instability and cancer at the University of Sussex, and one of the UK’s leading radon experts.‘Because radon risk rises directly with dose, over time that will mean more lung-cancer cases.’Alastair Gray, a professor of health economics at the University of Oxford, who led the 2009 study published in the BMJ, concurs: as people are exposed to more radon by working from home, ‘that would eventually increase the number of deaths attributable to radon’ he says.Professor Aaron Goodarzi, director of the Robson DNA Science Centre at the University of Calgary and a leading radon researcher, adds: ‘The effects, assuming no other intervention to reduce those exposures takes place in the meantime, would be felt by the end of the 2030s.’Meanwhile, experts warn that radon exposure isn’t just a problem in ‘high-risk’ granite rock areas such as Cornwall or Derbyshire – where the rock naturally emits more of the gas.Tests by the UKHSA in 2022 found pockets of high radon in areas such as Kent, Suffolk, Lincolnshire, South Wales and South-East England – especially Brighton and Hove. That’s because radon can travel sideways through underground cracks and groundwater, and rise to the surface miles away, explains Antonio Ferreira, a geologist at the British Geological Survey.Even in the same street, some houses could have a high reading while others don’t – because some houses sit over small pockets of uranium-rich ground and are poorly ventilated, allowing gas to build up indoors. Jake Parker paid £2,500 to have an extraction pump fitted to the sump system of his new house in Dartmoor, Devon Janet Whitehead lives with lasting damage from lung cancer, which she believes may have been caused be high levels of the gas in her basement officeOwen Wells says he has seen dangerous concentrations in not just homes but schools and NHS buildings. ‘We’ve tested hospitals where patients were being kept in rooms with levels far above the safe limits,’ he says. ‘The trust didn’t know until we tested it for them.’Earlier this month, the UK Radon Association – the trade association representing professionals involved in radon testing and protection – wrote an open letter to the Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, urging the Government to act on what it called ‘the invisible killer’ of indoor air.It called for routine testing in all schools and nurseries, and for radon education to be built into antenatal checks, plus new funding for local testing schemes.(Currently, testing is only required in schools and nurseries if they’re in a ‘radon-affected area’ – defined as more than 1 per cent of properties above 200Bq/m³ – or if rooms are below ground.)You can find out whether you live or work in a low-risk or high-risk area using the UKHSA interactive map (ukradon.org) – but this can also lead to a false sense of security, says Professor Goodarzi. ‘People can look up their area, see it’s marked low‑risk, and assume they’re safe – but that’s nonsense,’ he says.‘Every home is different – and the only way to know is to test.’To protect the population, Professor Gray says the Government should fit all new-build homes with a radon-proof membrane in the foundations of the building. ‘It’s basically a souped-up damp-proof membrane across the footprint of the building,’ he says. ‘It’s cost-effective.’Currently, builders are only told to fit this protective membrane if the site falls in a high-risk area.Once it is installed, the UKHSA says re-testing should be carried out to ensure it isn’t leaking – this should be repeated in the first year, as well as if there are any alterations to a house – or ‘periodically’ (many housing standards suggest every ten years; mitigation firms – specialist contractors who install fans and membranes – advise every two years if you have an extraction pump or fan system). This regular testing is needed because the fan and seals can also fail without you noticing, and radon can creep back.The basic system consists of a sump – a small cavity or pipe network – installed beneath the floor to collect radon gas from the soil and vent it outside; adding a fan (the extraction pump) means the gas is continuously sucked out from under the house. But radon testing is voluntary on housing – and there’s no legal duty to check any barrier actually works.Jake Parker, 61, a holiday park owner from Dartmoor, Devon, discovered this when he and his wife moved from Exeter to Dartmoor in Devon. ‘The solicitor advised me have a radon test done on the new house because the area’s high-risk,’ he says. ‘The test came back at around 800 – four times the safe limit – and we thought: “We’re about to buy a house that could make us ill.”’Jake’s property had been almost completely rebuilt in 2018 and was supposed to have all the latest radon protection. ‘It was more or less a new house, rebuilt with all the modern building regulations, so we thought it wouldn’t be a problem,’ he says. ‘It even had a sump and a special membrane under the floor – but when we tested it, the levels were high.’ How to check your house: You can check your home’s risk using the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) map at ukradon.org./information/ukmaps.The site shows whether your address is in an area where more than one in 100 homes is likely to exceed the recommended limit of 200Bq/m³.For a more precise reading, you can buy a radon risk report for your exact address from the same site for £3.50. It gives an estimate of the average radon level expected in your home based on local geology and test data.If the report comes back with a high-risk reading, you can order a home radon test kit from ukradon.org. It costs £52 and includes two small detectors you place in house for three months – before posting them back for analysis.The report tells you your average exposure and whether you need to take action to reduce radon in your house. For example, by opening windows, improving underfloor ventilation, sealing cracks, and installing an extraction pump and sump (see main story) or a positive-pressure fan system, a loft-mounted fan that gently pushes filtered air into the home to reduce radon entry by slightly raising indoor pressure.Private testing is also available from accredited firms listed on the UKHSA website, such as Mould Ex Ltd, Radonova and ProTen Services. Specialists later found that gas was escaping around pipework and edges of the membrane.‘You can buy a new house and assume it’s safe, but it’s not guaranteed,’ says Jake. ‘The builders had followed the rules – but nobody tested it afterwards.’Jake paid £2,500 to have an extraction pump added to the sump system to vent the gas continuously and bring levels down. So far, this seems to be working. ‘Levels are now under 200,’ he says.Owen Wells warns that newer homes may pose a greater risk for children: ‘Modern properties tend to be more airtight for energy efficiency – which is good for heating bills but bad for radon. If air can’t escape, radon can build up.’He adds: ‘It’s a particular concern for children because they’re more sensitive to radiation and they’ve got many more years ahead of them for that damage to build up.‘That’s another reason it worries me – because children and young families are the ones most likely to be living in newer housing. But for all ages, basements are particularly risky because they’re below ground and act as a collection point for gas.‘If you’re using a converted cellar as an office or bedroom, that’s a real concern because it’s where radon naturally gathers. You’re sitting in the part of the house where it’s most concentrated.’Former schoolteacher Janet Whitehead believes high levels of radon in a basement office may have caused her lung cancer, diagnosed in 2012. ‘It was a huge shock to be diagnosed,’ she says. ‘I never smoked and never worked anywhere where people smoked around me.’She had major surgery to remove large amounts of tissue from both lungs as well as lymph nodes. ‘But the cancer came back even after treatment,’ she says.She and her husband Alan, who both grew up in Manchester, had moved to Ottawa in Canada in the 1980s, and the family had for years lived in a house where Janet had spent long days running her design business and looking after their three children.‘I was a stay-at-home mum and my office was in the basement –the worst place, we now know, for radon to collect,’ says Janet.By the time of her diagnosis, the couple had moved house but Alan, who had previously worked as an executive in the chemicals industry, had coincidentally set up a company to tackle radon emissions in people’s homes – and he asked the new owners of their former home to test it.‘Within days, the detector was showing 3,200Bq/m³,’ says Alan, now in his 70s. ‘That confirmed what we suspected – Janet’s exposure had been massive.’Since then, Alan has helped develop Canada’s national radon map and works with oncologists, builders and real-estate bodies to push for routine radon testing.‘When Janet was diagnosed in 2012, hardly anyone here had heard of radon,’ he says. ‘We had to fight to get doctors and health authorities to take it seriously. Now, you can’t sell a home in most Canadian provinces without declaring whether it’s been tested.’ Canada, he says, is ‘15 years ahead’ of the UK in public awareness and prevention.‘We were exactly where Britain is now – low awareness, no testing in homes or schools, no rules for builders,’ he says. ‘Change only came once people realised non-smokers were dying and there was a clear cause.’Janet, now 71, still lives with lasting damage from the disease.‘People think lung cancer is something you do to yourself from smoking,’ she says.‘But people die from radon-induced lung cancer every year, and it’s totally preventable. You’d never know unless you test your home.’
Δημοσιεύτηκε: 2025-11-17 17:23:00
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