History of Radon

Radon was discovered by Friedrich Ernst Dorn, a German chemist, in 1900 while studying radium's decay chain. Originally named niton after the Latin word for shining, "nitens". It has been known as radon since 1923.

 

Early effects of Radon

The effects of radon have been with us for several centuries.  During the Middle Ages pitchblende miners in present day Austria were known to die at a relatively young age.

It was not until the turn of the previous century that their cause of death was recognized as lung cancer. In the United States, epidemiological studies showed there was an unusually incidence of lung cancer among uranium miners. Eventually occupational limits were established for radon concentrations in uranium mines.

In 1986, the Virginia Department of Health conducted a state-wide survey of 800 homes and found that approximately 12% of the homes that were screened for radon had elevated levels of radon above 4 picocuries/liter, the EPA's recommended action level. In 1992 the EPA supported a larger study of approximately 1,600 homes. The results of this study verified the results of the earlier study. The results also indicated that radon levels generally were not elevated in Tidewater Virginia, which is east of the fall line of Virginia's rivers along Interstate 90.

It was not until approximately 1970 that a quantitative risk estimate for lung cancer could be calculated for miners, and not until the 1990s that a risk estimate could be established based on epidemiological studies on radon in dwellings and lung cancer.

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 Radon in Homes

In the middle of the 1980s, houses with extremely high radon concentrations were found. The high radon concentrations were caused by entering radon from soil. In cooperation with the Czech Geological Institute, the regions with expected low, middle and high radon risk were predicted. The systematic measurements were successively started in the regions of the Czech Republic, and the public and the government focused on the problem of radon entering from soil.

The danger of radon exposure in dwellings was discovered in 1984 by Stanley Watras, an employee at the Limerick nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania began testing homes for radon and found elevated levels of radon in them as well. Elevated levels of radon were associated with a geological structure called the Redding Prong. In Virginia there is a similar structure called the Triassic Basin.