As a homeowner, you strive to make your house a safe
environment for your family and friends. You use non-toxic cleaning
supplies and routinely replace the batteries in smoke and carbon
monoxide detectors. You keep air vents clean and use insulated
electrical cords. Your house is a model of a healthy, safe home.
Or, so you think.
While your home appears to be free of any obvious
health hazards, there could be radon in the air you breathe and
toxic molds festering behind walls, appliances like washing machines
and refrigerators, sinks and other moisture rich areas. Breathing
in excessive amounts of radon can cause cancer. Exposure or contact
with mold can irritate your eyes, skin, nose, throat and lungs
and in some instances trigger severe allergic reactions and asthma
attacks. Before you start to panic, take a deep breath and relax.
There are a few, simple things you can do to combat radon and mold
problems before they pose any real health threat to your family.
First of all, you need to know what radon and mold
are and how they get into your home. Radon is an invisible, odorless,
tasteless, cancer-causing, radioactive gas. It is created by the
breakdown of uranium in soil, rock and water. Found across the
United States , radon can find its way into any type of building,
including homes. Just because you live in a brand-new, well-built
home, don't think you're safe from radon. Radon can be present
in any home – new or old, well-sealed and drafty homes and homes
with or without basements. An estimated one out of every 15 homes
in the U.S. has elevated radon levels, according to the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA). Typically, radon moves up through the
ground to the air above and into the home through cracks in solid
floors, construction joints, cracks in walls, gaps in suspended
floors, gaps around service pipes, cavities inside walls and the
water supply cracks and other holes in the foundation. Sometimes,
radon enters the home through the water supply – usually in instances
where the water source is a well. Building materials can give off
radon, but building materials rarely cause radon problems by themselves.
Once the radon is inside the home, it becomes trapped and contaminates
the air you breathe.
Molds are simple, microscopic organisms, present
virtually everywhere, indoors and outdoors. Molds, like mushrooms
and yeasts, are fungi. The presence of molds outdoors is not a
bad thing. They help break down dead material and recycle nutrients
in the environment. The presence of molds indoors is not necessarily
a bad thing either. Molds only pose a risk to people when they
are present in large numbers, which occurs primarily when there
is active mold growth in the home. Usually, mold spores in the
air inside homes come from outdoor sources and are not present
in any concentrated levels. However, molds will grow and multiply
whenever conditions are right – organic material such as paper
or wood is present and sufficient moisture is available. Common
sources of indoor moisture that may lead to mold problems include
leaky roofs, plumbing leaks, overflow from sinks or sewers, damp
basements, or steam from showers or cooking.
Exposure to radon and molds can cause a myriad of
health problems. When you breathe air containing radon, there's
a risk you could develop lung cancer. The Surgeon General has warned
that radon is the second leading cause of lung cancer in the United
States today - only smoking causes more lung cancer deaths. According
to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) 2003 Assessment
of Risks from Radon in Homes, radon is estimated to cause about
21,000 lung cancer deaths each year.
Molds can trigger asthmatic or allergic reactions
and cause inflammation or infection. Exposure to molds can also
cause symptoms such as:
- Respiratory problems, such as wheezing, difficulty breathing,
and shortness of breath
- Nasal and sinus congestion
- Eye irritation (burning, watery, or reddened eyes)
- Dry, hacking cough
- Nose or throat irritation
- Skin rashes or irritation
Occasionally, people exposed to molds report headaches,
memory problems, mood swings, nosebleeds, body aches and pains,
and fevers.
The first step in ensuring molds and radon don't
pose health risks in your home is to actually find out if either
of them is present in large enough quantities to cause adverse
affects. Testing is the only way to know if your home contains
dangerous levels of radon. Inexpensive, at-home testing kits are
available at hardware stores and retail outfits. You can also hire
qualified professionals to do the testing for you. Oftentimes a
visual check of moisture-rich areas such as your bathrooms, kitchen,
window sills, and laundry room will alert you as to whether or
not you have a mold problem. However, there are many places you
can't see that might be home to a growing mass of mold spores -
the back side of dry wall, wallpaper, or paneling, the top side
of ceiling tiles, the underside of carpets and pads, areas inside
walls around leaking or condensing pipes, inside ductwork, and
in roof materials. A musty smell or the knowledge you had water
damage in an area can alert you to the fact you may have a mold
problem. Should you believe you have a hidden source of mold in
your home, you can hire professionals to conduct testing.
There are a variety of methods you can utilize to
reduce the radon level if testing indicates it's too high. In some
instances, sealing cracks in floors and walls may help to reduce
radon levels. In other instances, you may need to install a vent
pipe system and fan, which pulls radon from beneath the house and
vents it to the outside. For mold, you'll need to hire professional
cleaners if the problem is widespread or in hard to reach areas
like behind walls. You can remove small amounts of mold from hard
surfaces by scrubbing with detergent and water and drying the area
thoroughly. If you plan to tackle a mold problem yourself, be sure
to take the necessary safety precautions. The EPA advises that
when trying to remove mold, you wear gloves, goggles and an N-95
respirator, which is available at many hardware stores and over
the Internet.
In order for a home to be a healthy and safe environment,
homeowners have to focus their attention not just on what they
can see, but also what they can't see. Detecting the presence of
radon and molds isn't hard so why risk putting you and your family's
health at risk?
