This gas is responsible for almost 50% of the total dose of natural radiation that we receive just from living on our planet. Continuous radon production reaches our homes through cracks and fissures in buildings. Groundwater also carries radon – rivers and oceans have much lower concentrations. On average, the radioactivity of a liter of water due to radon is usually 4 decays per second. But if that water comes from a well in land with a high uranium content, the activity is 5,000 times higher.
In the spa town Bad Gastein in Austria, the water is a million times more radioactive and the local spas advertise their “radon therapy” in which you are encouraged to drink it and inhale this radioactive gas. According to measurements carried out in spas in our country, the situation is not so alarming, but some have been found with values as high as 824 disintegrations per second per liter of another radioactive element, Radio-226.
The real panic room in our homes is the bathroom: Canadian scientists revealed that radon in bathroom air increases rapidly after a 10-minute warm shower. Once completed, more than an hour and a half had to pass before the radiation returned to initial levels.
Living in a house with a radon concentration of 150 decays per second per cubic meter increases the risk of lung cancer by between 1% and 3%. Several studies carried out in Spain have determined that the values inside homes vary between 10 and 15,000 disintegrations per second per cubic meter, with an average of 40. The highest values were found in Galicia, Extremadura and the Sierra de Madrid.
