Stealthier than any burglar, radon can invade your home.
Although exposed to radon your whole life, you will most likely never suffer any ill effect from it. You might never even know it's there. An uninvited guest, it invades millions of homes every day without ever tripping an alarm. Yet this colorless, odorless, tasteless gas issuing soundlessly from the earth itself, contributes to one of the deadliest forms of cancer, wreaking pathological effects especially among smokers.
Radon
Although invisible, ionizing radiation strikes all parts of Earth, exposing everyone.
Radon is one of the world's major sources of ionizing radiation, notes the World Health Organization. Ionizing radiation is radiation with enough energy to remove an electron from an atom. Natural sources of ionizing radiation, such as cosmic rays and terrestrial rays, account for more than 80 percent of the ionizing radiation absorbed by people in the U.S., with 55 percent coming from radon, observes the Argonne National Laboratory.
Exposure and Effects
Radon enters the body almost exclusively through inhalation.
According to the National Cancer Institute, the pathological effects of radon exposure can be traced back to the invisible, odorless, tasteless gas (radon) that issues from the normal decay of uranium in rocks and soil, seeps up through the ground and diffuses into the air. Nearly all of the radon that enters the body enters through inhalation. Radon sometimes appears in drinking water but, even then, its damage occurs almost exclusively through breathing it in after its release from the water.
Nature of Effects
Lung cancer is the only kind of cancer linked to radon exposure.
Inside the lungs, radon quickly decays, giving off tiny radioactive particles. As they break down, these particles release small bursts of energy, which can damage lung tissue and, over the course of a lifetime, lead to lung cancer. Lung cancer is the only kind of cancer proven to be associated with prolonged radon exposure, states the National Cancer Institute.
Magnitude of Effects
By far, smoking exceeds radon as a cause of lung cancer.
Scientists estimate that radon, the second most important contributor to lung cancer after smoking, is involved in 15,000 to 22,000 U.S. cancer deaths per year. By contrast, smoking, leads to an estimated 160,000 annual cancer deaths---an effect 8 times greater than radon's.
Scope of Effects
Evidence suggests that radon may contribute to any kind of lung cancer.
The term "lung cancer" refers to at least 12 different cell types of tumors, according to professors Sue Huether and Kathryn McCance. Evidence suggests that radon exposure contributes to all types of lung cancer.
Interactive Effects
Genes, along with other factors, may determine radon's effects on lung tissue.
Radon and smoking together pose a greater risk for lung cancer than does either radon or smoking by itself. Quantity, too, is important: the more you are exposed to radon, the greater is your risk for developing lung cancer. Moreover, biological factors, such as your age and your particular genes, may influence the degree to which radiation contributes to lung cancer, notes the American Cancer Society. That would explain why the vast majority of people exposed to radon never develop the disease.
Tags: lung cancer, exposed radon, ionizing radiation, lung cancer, that radon, almost exclusively
