Christian County residents are being asked to grab a radon testing kit from the Hopkinsville-Christian County Public Library to not just make sure their homes are radon free, but to also join in a study by the Kentucky National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.
Dr. Ellen Hahn is a professor at the University of Kentucky College of Nursing and is the Principal Investigator of the Radon Research Study and appeared on WHOP Tuesday morning to discuss the study and how important it is to check for radon, especially in Christian County. Many people still don’t know what radon is, and Dr. Hahn clarified that it is a radioactive gas that is undetectable by the human senses, and it can cause cancers, specifically lung cancer.
Christian County is high on the charts for radon, because of what is in our soil—certain types of rock, especially bedrock, release radon as they decay, and there’s a lot of it in the county.
Luckily, you can test for radon and then take efforts to have it cleaned from your home. However, only 204 homes in Christian County have been tested for radon in the last 30 years, meaning more could still be at risk.
The Radon on the RADAR, or Residents Acting to Detect and Alleviate Radon, study is underway across several counties, including Christian and Logan counties, and Dr. Hahn says citizens can pick up a free kit at the Hopkinsville-Christian County Public Library.
There will be a community program about radon at the library on October 23 starting at 5 p.m. Dr. Hahn says doing a test of your home is simple—just check out a detector at the library, pick a place in your home, plug in the batteries, and set it in place. You’ll have your first radon values within a day.
For more information on the study, click here.