Free is good!

one more thing for the so called Home Inspector, it was a great Time when we just bought a House and lived in it.Next will Radon Removal Experts .

Unbelievable!!!!

I thought I was being transported back some 2 to 3 decades when I read this. That is about how long we have known about this.

When we first became aware of the amount of fine particulates in the air in PG, some realized that we had a double whammy since the radon that is present in some homes “plates out” on surfaces such as walls as well as particulates in the air. The radon laden particulates are then breathed in.

There was information distributed through the City utility bills.

Almost as if radon is like the flavor of the day and has come back again for some reason or another.

Never really went away as far as I am concerned.

Unbelievable!!!

“Our study aims to better understand the types of homes that have high radon levels and inform future improvements in BC health policies and building construction standards,” says BC Lung Association CEO, Scott McDonald.

Where are the old studies? Someone must have put them up on the shelves with all the other studies.

The building codes have already been changed and speak about what can be done about it to mitigate the potential impact.

As I understand it, different parts of the City have different levels of radon in the ground.

So, one of the things that should happen is that a mapping of the city should be done to identify areas with high radon content. Then we can decide whether to build there or not and take measures during and after construction to reduce the impact.

Radon is also transmitted by water. Take a shower and one breathes in radon if it is present in water.

Let the Canadian Cancer Society tell us how much higher the lung cancer rate is than in the rest of BC/Canada. Based on morbidity stats it is. There are many reasons why. Some of them are well known to those public health officials who study such things.

Speaking of maps … seek and ye shall find

http://www.irps.info/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Radon-Potential-BC.jpg

Looks like on the macro scale we are not that high if the mapping has been done properly. That does not mean that there are not pockets in PG that are high. We need some local data if it is not already available.

Maybe after a few years of them new fangled poisonous light bulbs we can do a similar study about our mercury inundated environment. Studies make the world go around. Now go study something. Anything. But don’t forget to ask for a generous government grant or something. I’ll pay for that. Carry on,

Harbinger right on.

It works like this, grants given out to study efficiency of them curly mercury laden lightbulbs, ignoring the mercury health effects. At a later date studies, grants, can be gotten to study the potential health effects from broken bulbs. That is how the grant machine keeps going.

Those fancy granite counter tops make a gieger counter go tick tick.

I found another map showing PG as being up there with the top 2 or 3 …. if not being the highest. That is a 2013 update. But, it is also how I remember it when it was first brought to our attention.

http://www.carexcanada.ca/cdn/E_radonBC_2013update.png

So, the question that should be posed here is to the Cancer Society, the City, and to the provincial health and more specifically Northern Health … WHAT GIVES?????

Out of the blue we seem to see some more incompetence.

And we are supposed to take care of ourselves ….. yeah right. There are those things we can do, and those things we expect others that are more capable to do for us ….. that is why we pay them the big bucks, either by tax or by donations.

The city if Prince George has some of the worst air quality around. How do we know this doesn’t contribute to our high percentage of lung cancer and respiratory illness. They should do a study of our pulp mills????

Lung cancer kills more people than breast/prostate and colon cancer combined. I wished the BC Lung Association would advocate free screening for lung cancer in high risk areas.
Also, do you have to disclose any radon level above the norm when you want to sell your home?

So, here I go again opening my mouth when I should probably be listening (and in response to an earlier post, I would agree with gus’ post about Abraham Lincoln/Mark Twain being given credit for that quote whereas it is probably most best attributed to a KJV bible passage).

The issue of PG air quality is a bit of a “soap box” issue for me. I was a 40 year resident of the city and due to a significant upper respiratory illness that was eventually diagnosed by a leading Ear, Nose, and Throat specialist at St. Paul’s Hospital as idiopathic midline destructive disease caused by air pollution I had to leave Prince George. It was his medical opinion that if I did not leave, I had one year to live. The diagnosis was determined after nearly three years of testing (including one of the many nasal biopsies coming back positive for cancer; this was ultimately determined not to be cancer but the auto-immune disease). My illness was a destruction of the upper respiratory tissue (complete necrosis of my nasal septum, chronic sinus infection, plus multiple other symptoms) and, as a test, I left Prince George for three months and lived in Kelowna (never went to PG in that time). After the three months, I was seen by my specialist and the results were staggering; the disease had stopped spreading and the infected tissue was showing signs of clearing up and becoming healthy. As a result, my family I left PG immediately, moved to Kelowna, and restarted our lives. Interesting enough, I had to make a very quick trip to PG last month and while I was in town for approximately 36 hours, I developed a significant sinus infection that has required a two-week run of a very strong antibiotic.

In response to the issue of an air quality study, as this had a direct impact on my life and as I am slowly working on a bachelor degree (never too old to learn – I hold an engineering diploma and I am completing a business degree), I did a research paper on PG air quality for an environmental study course. I won’t summarise the paper but in the course of my research, I came across a study completed in 2007 by Drs. Elliot and Copes of the BC Centre for Disease Control titled “Estimate of Mortality Burden of Air Pollution in Northern and Interior British Columbia, 2001-2005”. The results are very interesting to say the least but I would offer that the report is focused mostly on fine particulate matter; while I agree that this is a significant issue, my research identified numerous other chemicals of concern that are present in the air shed (monitored by the BC Ministry of Environment) and, in my opinion, there are other air pollutants not yet known or studied due to the multiple industries that contribute to the compromised air shed and what I believe a lack of technical and scientific knowledge on how these multiple pollutants interact.

Here is a link to the report:

http://www.northernhealth.ca/Portals/0/ElliottAndCopes_ReportREMortality.pdf

The Elliot and Copes study was a start but I would offer that more needs to be done.

Carpenter …..

Studies have been done, but we have been told that we have too few people living in the area to be statistically valid. I understand at one time to do an epidemiological study one had to have a population base of 100,000+ …

Interestingly enough the Scandinavian countries with similar weather, small communities and similar wood industries are not afraid to point the finger with fewer numbers.

I was into this 15 years ago, but not so much anymore. Copes was one of the people that defended the ministry’s iat the time.

So now he has changed his tune, eh????

I guess we’re just supposed to shut up and put up!

Can’t see the harm in knowing for our home. Have small children and picked up our detectors for the study already. Do better when you know better.

20 or so years ago UBC conducted a Radon study of PG homes. I enrolled in the study and they sent out two collectors – one for the upstairs and one for the basement. I aput them on a wall at about 5 1/2 ft and they sat there for a year. They were then shipped to UBC and analyzed. I got a report back about three months later – neither collector had picked up anything. I oput the report in a safe place, so safe that now I cannot find it. Oh, I live in the Hart Highlands.

“Also, do you have to disclose any radon level above the norm when you want to sell your home?”
I too would like the answer to this. We plan to sell in 2-3 years, and would rather not know, than to have to disclose. What I don’t need is an unsellable house.

Radon comes from rock. Her is a page on the geology of radon.
http://energy.cr.usgs.gov/radon/georadon/3.html

from that link:
” … homes in areas with drier, highly permeable soils and bedrock, such as hill slopes, mouths and bottoms of canyons, coarse glacial deposits, and fractured or cavernous bedrock, may have high levels of indoor radon.

“Even if the radon content of the air in the soil or fracture is in the “normal” range (200-2,000 pCi/L), the permeability of these areas permits radon-bearing air to move greater distances before it decays, and thus contributes to high indoor radon.”

Based on that the bowl of the city are likely to have higher content of radon than the heights around the bowl.

“Houses with low indoor air pressures, poorly sealed foundations, and several entry points for soil air, however, may draw as much as 20 percent of their indoor air from the soil. Even if the soil air has only moderate levels of radon, levels inside the house may be very high.”

That is what new construction should guard against. A house inspector coming in after the house is built cannot test for the adequate construction of the house other than destructive testing and they do not do that unless you pay for it.

The only thing they can test for is that there is a should be a higher pressure in the house in relation to the outside. That means pumping air INTO the house, not OUT of the house. Hood fans, bathroom fans, fireplaces flues, furnace flues all exhaust air out of the house meaning that the pressure in a house is typically slightly below the pressure outside the house.

So, pump “fresh” air into the house with the ability to temper the air to inside house temperature. That would be a custom house until manufacturers start reversing their thinking about the norm these days.

Radon is a concern in the Prince George area. And certified Radon Testers and Radon Mitigators are on the C.A.R.S.T website.