[Waterluvian]

The difficult thing for me is that while I believe radon can cause lung cancer, I think products are often sold based on fear. “Second leading cause” doesn’t really mean anything in isolation, does it?

What slice of my mortality pie was radon before and after spending $5000? Could I spend $5000 to cut a bigger slice out of it in another way, like eating better or hiring a grizzly bear to make me exercise more often?

I think action is better than decision paralysis, but I wish I could make much more informed decisions.

[zamadatix]

For 93% of people the only cost is the $15 test kit to verify "yep, don't need to even think about it".

For the other 7% that then need to really do a cost-benefit the data is out there but you do need to go through your specific circumstances to get a meaningful number. The risk levels vary vastly (orders of magnitudes) between both the radon level and your life choices/situation, so it's relatively meaningless to share individual cost-benefit analyses.

[dathinab]

> so it's relatively meaningless to share individual cost-benefit analyses.

yes

1. it's very affordable to fix

2. long term exposure always adds a non negligible risk

so just fix it

I'm confused why people get hung up on a cost-benefit analysis which is pretty much always guaranteed to be a net positive. Either slightly or majorly.

And if it's a rented apartment in many countries you can force your land lord to fix it with a wide arsenal of funny things you can do if they try to refuse :shrug:

[zamadatix]

What you quoted doesn't really agree with what you're stating, which is really "it's meaningful to share the cost-benefit analyses because they'll all say it's worth it".

The reason they will not all say it's worth it is because there is nothing "magical" that happens at 4.0 pCi/L. Whether that is the sensible threshold vs doing something else with your money is a very different answer for a non smoker who makes 35k/y vs a smoker who makes 250k/y.

[3036e4]

Saw someone built his own DIY radon fan system. Think it was a clip from Swedish public service tv. He built it using 12V fans from server racks. Guess that is an option as well.

[infecto]

Why? Purpose built radon fans are not expensive and at most you have some pvc and fans.

[jychang]

Yeah, this is the correct heuristic.

Spend $15 or $100 for one or two measurements, *then* worry about cost to mitigate.

[SOLAR_FIELDS]

Advice also applies to mold. A lot of people worry about mold in their house. It's actually quite straightforward to determine if this is actually a problem: Home Depot sells "test kits" for a few bucks that are essentially petri dishes. Buy two of these, put one inside where you are worried and then the other outside and wait 3-4 days. If they look radically different, then send the inside one in for actual analysis, which is an additional ~$40 USD. Then and only then do you need to action and by that point you know exactly what the problem is so you don't have to pay some "expert" to sell you some massively expensive mitigation strategy that you probably don't need.

[pjc50]

Is it common to have an invisible mould problem? Lots of people are in the situation where there is really visible mould but the problem is getting their landlord to fix it, without getting into allegations over drying clothes inside etc.

[SOLAR_FIELDS]

There's a lot of fear over things like black mold in the states. It's extremely rare but it can be life threatening, and it's one of those things that people see and get nervous about when they see that for instance their HVAC vent has mold spots, that they are breathing toxic air. 9 times out of 10, it's totally fine. This method mentioned above gives homeowners the peace of mind that they aren't poisoning their families accidentally for an extremely affordable price. The alternative of calling mold remediation experts in is going to be extremely pricey, and those people cannot be trusted to be upfront on whether your mold problem is 1. actually a problem and 2. actually dangerous - because they make money on selling expensive remediation solutions.

[jajko]

I would expect that mold can build up ie in ventilation where it remains unseen unless it literally clogs he whole system. You can't see the spores an often there is no strong foul smell.

[dathinab]

honesty depending where you are such allegations might be very baseless & meaningless for many reasons like

- high base humidity of the place (e.g. the city where I live has a yearly avg. humidity of 70%, but specific to my apartment and ignoring the dry seasons over 80% is the norm (also for context not tropical but central EU, it's stuff like 20C+85% humidity). So airing out your room might increase air humidity...

- in small apartments it's the quite often norm that the side effect of taking a show can temporary rise humidity quite a bit, even if you ventilate properly. Most bathrooms in small appartments are just not well designed wrt. this (context I'm not speaking about long hot showers, but short normal warm showers).

- in small bed rooms night sweat can rise humidity by quite a lot, mostly if you are slightly sick but anyway

- just basic flowers can raise humidity, too

excluding dry areas IMHO for most no large apartments the landlord has forsaken any right to claim it's your fault if they don't provide reasonable measurements against humidity (even if it's just a half way decent (noise wise) air humidifier. Reason: Just standard normal expected usage will cause to high humidity level even if you do air out the apartment twice a day (which depending on weather conditions you might not even be able to do)

Sadly that isn't necessary the local laws/regulations POV.

[xattt]

Our local library system offers these to borrow for six-week spans (or whatever the length of the testing is). It’s a one-and-done deal and you’re good for as long as you stay in your home. Batteries included.

[nic_wilson]

The EPA recommends home owners mitigate with radon levels of 4 pCi/L and above, and the EPA recommends home owners mitigate ”consider” mitigation at levels 2-4. Often you will see people post radon results in the 10+ or even 50+ range, which may lead you to think 4 pCi/L is not too bad, but in fact exposure to that level is the equivalent of 8 cigarettes a day or 200 chest X-rays/year.

[Waterluvian]

Given the average level of radon in the air outdoors is 10% of that, being outdoors is 20 chest x-rays per year, eh? That’s almost a cigarette per day being outdoors!

https://www.epa.gov/radon/what-epas-action-level-radon-and-w...

The EPA doesn’t make such creative claims. But the sites that do will also conveniently sell you stuff.

https://radonbegone.com/what-does-your-radon-number-mean/

https://www.nationalradondefense.com/radon-information/radon...

[dmurray]

One cigarette a day doesn't sound that bad for you. 40-a-day smokers exist and while they're unhealthy, they're not universally dying in their fifties, so one fortieth of that effect seems small.

The biggest risk of smoking one cigarette a day is not that it will give you cancer, it's that it will give you nicotine addiction which will lead to smoking twenty a day and getting cancer. Radon exposure doesn't have that effect.

[lostlogin]

Cancer isn’t the only risk though, the 100 other things are pretty bad too. It isn’t ‘just’ that you might die of cancer, it’s the decades of leg ulcers, stroke, heart and lung disease etc.

[dathinab]

yes cancer is only one of the more deadly and more reliably attributable to cigarettes things

there are quite many things made much more likely with smoking which would end very deadly but modern medicine has learned to to move into the non deadly if treated in time area, which doesn't mean it it doesn't leaves you with long lasting side effects...

like most cases in my environment of smokers having "likely smoking caused" issues fall under that category (so far, aging/time tends to let you see more death in your environment and I'm not yet that old)

[jajko]

Those are some powerful claims, do you have any links for that? Generally 2-pack smokers that started early ie in their 20s or even earlier don't live till retirement where I live, but I agree its a small sample and generally such people don't live a healthy life overall.

[dathinab]

> people don't live a healthy life overall.

to some degree that is exactly the thing

by smoking you add a risk

and the more ways you add risk through your live the more likely you will die an early death

it's just basic statistics

and for the same reason you will find someone who does add all the risks but somehow still dies with 90+, if your sample size is large enough and factors complicated enough you are pretty much guaranteed to find some pretty big outliers

but realistically speaking it a pretty bad idea to assume you are such an outlier, but many people tend to ("basically") do exactly that (due to an combination of subconsciously avoiding reality and simply not thinking things through)

[dmurray]

A couple of sources putting the life expectancy cost at 10-20 minutes per cigarette.

Smoking for 40 years that would be 5 months at 1 a day or 17 years at 40 a day.

I think that's all consistent with what you said: 2 packs a day and you usually, but by no means always, don't make it to retirement at ~66. Five months is enough that I'd take some care to avoid it, though.

[0] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1117323/

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/dec/30/single-cigar...

[conradev]

It’s very region specific. Just like some regions don’t have many basements, some have a lot of radon:

  Here in Maine about 36.5% of radon test results equal or exceed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) action level of 4 pCi/L, according to the Lung Association’s “State of Lung Cancer” report.

https://www.lung.org/media/press-releases/maine-radon-2024

If you own a basement in Maine, you should probably test it!

[tumult]

The indoor level of radon isn't going to be lower than outdoors. Indoors is either the same or higher than outdoors. Your level of exposure to radon will not go up by going outside. That's your background exposure level, and is already baked into the calculation of how much an effect an elevated exposure to radon in your home will have on you. Radon is a serious thing to consider, especially if your home has a basement. Radon mitigation is not a scam conspiracy.

[Waterluvian]

Like any good scam, they take a legitimate issue for few and sell it to many who don’t need it.

These websites will try to tell you that the average indoor radon level is equivalent to 2.5 cigarettes per day or 66 chest X-rays per year. The EPA doesn’t make that claim though.

[zamadatix]

The EPA already publishes the direct risk levels for a given pCi/L reading. Adding an intermediate step of how many cigarettes per day that is akin to is not giving you any new information (but is likely distracting you from just thinking about the risk level itself).

[jgalt212]

Has anyone ever done a meaningful cost benefit analysis for less than $15?

[zamadatix]

This is bang on why you're best off to just always start by paying the $15 to do the test and then let that drive whether there will actually be a need to cost-benefit analysis around mitigation costs.

[devjab]

Radon gas is a pretty big thing in construction where I live since our underground is mainly boulder clay (which apparently has or leaks or whatever a lot of radon gas). Anyway, In Denmark a little over 5000 get lung cancer every year, and 300 of thouse are from radon gas. Acording to our Kræftens Bekæmpelse (anti-cancer NGO) there may be an additional 25% risk of radon causing lung cancer if you smoke.

Since around 2000, it's been part of building regulations that you gotta build air-gapped foundations in family homes. Those who can measure radon gas are adviced to buy things to fight it, and you can reduce it to basically 0% for little money.

I never really considered it from an advertisement perspective as it's adviced by our government and non-profit NGO's. So there is that, if that helps you.

[dathinab]

> and you can reduce it to basically 0% for little money.

which is why I'm confused by people second questioning how bad it actually is in context of _fixing_ it (not in context of a national health scope)

if there is something which is known to be quite unhealthy in a non small degree, and there is a cheap fix why wouldn't you just fix it. In the end if it's very bad, or slightly less bad or the 10th leading cause instead or whatever doesn't matter, fixing it is affordable and it's guaranteed dangerous on long term exposure so you do it.

[TuringNYC]

I found most people dont know about this or think about this until there is a home purchase and home inspection -- that is when it is revealed, and typically when it is remediated as part of the purchase contingencies. If youre living in the same home for a while, you wouldnt typically know. Also, if you are a renter, you probably wont know and the landlord will probably purposefully not want to test.

In my state, the state forces some of these tests (e.g., smoke detector) as part of the sales process so at least there is some hook for testing.

[kelnos]

Is radon mitigation affordable, though? Someone in another subthread said they got quotes between $1600 and $3000. Even the low end of that is a difficult amount to spend for a lot of people in the US. If they're going to spend it (if they even can), they're going to want to know it's going to meaningfully decrease their risk of cancer.

I'm not saying it's not worth it -- that's the point, I don't know -- but I agree with people upthread that it would be nice to have better information with which to make decisions.

[bityard]

I don't know where you live but where I live in the Midwestern suburbs, $3k is on the low end for almost any significant home improvement/repair project except maybe repainting a room.

[infecto]

Midwest here. Radon mitigation usually starts at $1k. And can go up depending if they are drilling into the slab. For most cases it’s a trivial solve.

[lfowles]

And those repairs often get put off years or until a house sale becomes dependent on the.

[samus]

It might be significantly cheaper if installed in new buildings. Even if not, it barely moves the needle compared to the total cost of building a house, and it's almost nothing spread across the lifetime of a typical building.

[thebigspacefuck]

Relatively cheap for people that own a house

[furyofantares]

I'm with you on wanting to quantify.

https://www.epa.gov/radon/health-risk-radon

Scroll down to "Radon Risk If You Have Never Smoked". Looks pretty worthwhile to take it from "very high" to "almost nil". If "very high" was in the range of the 2nd highest level listed here, that's 2% chance. That's for lifetime exposure but there's also multiple people living in the house.

If you DO smoke, the numbers look VERY good for spending some cash to get rid of radon. (Of course you should also stop smoking.)

[Waterluvian]

That’s exactly the kind of information I was seeking! If your results come back at some ridiculous level, it could make complete sense.

But if your results come back much closer to normal background levels, there’s not much you can do. Even the EPA says it’s difficult to get it below 2.

Meanwhile, lots of websites out there try to scare you into buying remediation for low values (see comment below).

It’s the perfect bogeyman. Radon. Cancer. Invisible silent killer. And I think it’s demonstrated by the vibe-based “seems like a good idea” conclusions in these comments.

[ImPostingOnHN]

I think that if you start from the belief that radon mitigation is sold based on fear, and doesn't have value, then it's easy to cling to that belief and try to dismiss or explain away or minimize information that contradicts it, and to dismiss people who see value in it as 'fear buyers' who believe in a 'bogeyman' and say 'good idea' to things which, in your opinion, might not be good ideas.

A perspective perhaps different from yours: Avoidable cancer risk isn't great, and smart people* properly weighing the facts have repeatedly judged the value of radon mitigation to exceed the costs.

* - Probabilistically speaking, this includes many who are smarter than you and me

[menaerus]

I never heard of the radon cancer impact before and it took me 10 minutes to find couple of representative studies done for my local region which in fact did find the positive correlation between the areas with elevated radon measurements and people living in those areas getting the lung cancer. So, not that "it could make complete sense" but it certainly makes sense. I suggest you do the same research before calling out something as important as this a scam.

[irrational]

$5000? I got a bunch of quotes and none came anywhere near that high and I live in a home that made it difficult to install the system (finished basement, large footprint, three stories tall, concrete outer walls (ICF), etc. I think the highest was $3,000 and the lowest $1,600. I ended up installing it myself for about $500 in materials.

[zamadatix]

That's only the initial capex though. $5,000 is a realistic swag for install + lifetime electricity + minor system maintenance.

[bradlys]

These fans are not using $3000 in electricity over their lifetime.

[zamadatix]

I guess that depends how old you are when you install it and how long you plan to live but ~$7 per month is not at all an unrealistic electricity usage estimate for the system. 7*12*35 = $2,940.

Edit: E.g. the numbers from this site suggest, for 15 out of the 16 listed fan models, the lifetime electricity cost is likely to be significantly larger than the install cost unless you are already much older at the time you start using the system or you have extremely cheap electricity (or both) https://www.radonaway.com/radon-fan-operating-cost-calculato...

[dgfitz]

This point always amuses me. Thats like, 1 starbucks coffee a month, or 1 trip to a fast food place a month, or one extra thing at the grocery store a month, or half a movie ticket a month, or half a streaming service a month, or less than half an LLM subscription a month, I could go on for a while.

For the cost, preventing cancer seems like it's a wise investment. I say this as a cancer survivor.

[Waterluvian]

But it doesn’t prevent cancer. It lowers the risk of a specific kind of cancer by some amount. Is it $650 worth? That’s what I’m stuck on. People just go by vibe and say things like “it’s a good investment” but that’s just coming from I don’t know where.

[zamadatix]

It amuses me but maybe for the exact opposite reason: Phrase it to the median person as "for just a quarter per day" (queue sad music on a commercial) and we'll be worried about everything but the cost because it seems too low to think about. Say "For just 1 of less than 500 such choices you can afford to make in your lifetime" and suddenly we start wondering if it's something that makes the cut.

Of course that's median, most people on HN... probably should just get the system if the Radon levels are high.

[maxbond]

The present value of $7 in 35 years is $1.45, assuming a risk free rate of 4.5%. Paying $2940 over 35 years is much more affordable than paying $2940 up front. If the goal is to be rational about risk, let's right-size the numbers. Otherwise our figures will be misleading.

[kevin_thibedeau]

You're not going to spend a fixed price over time. You're going to consume a fixed amount of energy and pay an increasing rate as the dollar inflates.

[zamadatix]

I agree it's best to consider the capex/opex separately but I strongly disagree taking this approach will right-size the number. Here you're taking lifetime opex in nominal dollars but still devaluing it based on inflation anyways, which will not give you a meaningful result.

[ProAm]

That is still insanely high. The highest Ive seen for install is $650 but required quite a bit of piping to the exterior.

[irrational]

Just the materials cost was $500. How are they doing labor for $150?

[adamsiem]

And heating/cooling the fresh air replacing evacuated air + radon.

[irrational]

The air is under your slab. How would it be replaced by fresh air inside the house?

[Waterluvian]

It’ll vary considerably. But I just picked a random round number that doesn’t affect the point I’m sharing.

[ok_computer]

Radon fan drawing from two basement surfaces (concrete slab crawlspace addition and original stone foundation with cement floor): $1,200.00 usd in 2020 with warrantied fan and included confirmation test kit. US mid Atlantic. The prior homeowner thought radon was a scam too. It doesn’t make sense as a scam for a one-time capital and labor purchase.

[necheffa]

> What slice of my mortality pie was radon before and after spending $5000?

You'll never know. The same way people in the exclusion zone will never know if their thyroid cancer was always destined to be or if it really was related to the Chernobyl meltdown.

But spending (closer to $1000) to mitigate some risk from a known threat vector does seem thrifty.

[thaumasiotes]

> But spending (closer to $1000) to mitigate some risk from a known threat vector does seem thrifty.

No, there are a lot of known threat vectors.

[aorloff]

I might not be in as tight with the grizzlies, but $5k a year for a personal bear trainer seems a bit low. For a regular brown bear sure, but the grizzlies are expensive

[labster]

Yeah but no matter what, you gotta pay for the bear necessities.

[pkaye]

Here is something I found comparing the risk of radon exposure to other risks. Seems like if you don't smoke the risks are much lower.

https://www.epa.gov/radon/health-risk-radon

[londons_explore]

> What slice of my mortality pie was radon before and after spending $5000? Could I spend $5000 to cut a bigger slice out of it in another way, like eating better or hiring a grizzly bear to make me exercise more often?

I wish more people thought like this. Every time I go to the GP I want to get a printout of my mortality pie based on everything they know about me.

[falcor84]

I was actually thinking of getting one too. Is there a particular Grizzly-as-a-service offering that you recommend? I'm also considering signing up for Ostrich-as-a-service, and am really struggling with this decision.

[wvh]

I reckon grizzly bears have negative health side effects too... It's all a fine balancing act.

[reverendsteveii]

what's stopping you from getting answers for these questions?

[safety1st]

My approach is to think carefully about exactly what I want to know, word the question that way, then throw it to the AI and pray. I think this is better than ignoring it or spending too much time on it.

Question: Where does radon related mortality rank versus other mortality factors in the United States?

<AI "reasons" a bit>

...

Summary: Radon in perspective

Category / Cause Approx. Deaths per Year (U.S.) Rank / Context

Heart disease ~680,000 #1 overall cause of death

Cancer (all causes) ~613,000 #2 overall cause

Chronic lower respiratory disease ~145,000 #5 overall (includes COPD, etc.)

Lung cancer due to radon ~20,000–21,000

Subset of cancer deaths; about 3–4%

Toxic agents (inc. radon, pollutants) ~55,000 ~2.3% of all deaths (includes radon part)

So AI says it's a bit less than 1% of preventable deaths (or something) annually. Probably puts it in the top 150 causes or so. What you want to do with that hypothesis, or whether you want to spend time sanity checking it, is up to you. Hitting the gym to avoid heart disease is like 35 times more important. A radon home testing kit to eliminate uncertainty about this particular <1% risk is a one time cheap thing though.

[safety1st]

What the hell would someone downvote this for lol. Freaking Hacker News

[ImPostingOnHN]

Why bring up the AI at all, if you're also making those claims and vouching for that info?