Tim Evans of T-C home Inspections and Radon Mitigation specializes in keeping your home safe from something you cannot see.
Radon is a natural radioactive gas that forms when uranium, thorium, or radium break down in rocks, soil and groundwater, according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency.
People can be exposed to radon primarily from breathing radon in air that comes through cracks and gaps in buildings and homes. Because radon comes naturally from the earth, people are always exposed to it.
“I inform them that according to EPA standards, if a home has a certain level, then what we do is we can install the mitigation system. I always tell them that the nice thing about it is we’ve never found a home that we couldn’t mitigate to a safe range,” Evans said.
The two separate companies work together and Evans has done thousands of random tests throughout northwest Michigan.
Evans grew up in the Frankfort area on a cherry and apple farm the family still owns.
For most of his adult life, Evan raised a family in Traverse City and started a home inspection and radon mitigation company.
He finds a number of homes with elevated random numbers and the next thing the client will ask is, what do I do now? The process takes a few hours and is flexible.
Evans says testing for radon has increased over the past decade after being neglected for years without the service .
“What happened is the natural progression of the testing when more and more people from other parts of Michigan and other parts of the country moved to our service area and they really demanded that we do radon testing,” he said. “ We started doing more and the more you do, the more you find. What we found is a lot of people in northern Michigan that were born and raised were simply not aware of it and they never tested their home for it. Now that we’re testing a lot, we find it quite often.”
Evans reports that he finds an elevated amount of radon in about 10 to 24% of homes in northwest Michigan.
The challenge is having to test because it’s impossible to know if not.
“It’s a carcinogen, which means it can cause cancer. And in the case of radon, lung cancer is the main concern. When you get it to a certain degree, according to the EPA, that’s where lung cancer cases have popped up and that’s what oncologists believe it comes from,” Evans said. “About 20% of the rate of lung cancer is caused by elevated radon,” Evans said.
Radon is the second leading cause of cancer in the United States.
A radon detector is a device used to measure the concentration of radon gas in a specific area, typically a home or building. Courtesy photo
As high as a quarter of all homes are tested for radon.
Evans says that if you go into other counties including Washtenaw and Gaylord the radon level can be as high as 50%.
“Its really hit or miss,” he said. “The problem is you could have a home that’s perfectly fine as far as the level of radon and your next-door neighbor could have an elevated radon score.
“The soil directly underneath your home could contain a high level of uranium is broken down over millions of years and that’s where that radium radon gas comes from.”
Evans says Leelanau radon is slightly lower than in Grand Traverse County as far as elevated homes are concerned.
Evans company can install a “radon continuous monitoring system.”
“For most real estate transactions, we do a two-day test, but the EPA says if you want a longer turn, a longer term test, it could be advisable depending on your home. It’s really up to the client. We’ll do whatever the client wants, but normally we do a 40-hour, two-day test,” Evans said. “If you were just to monitor a home, it has natural peaks and valleys and there’s a couple of things in our environment that can change the level of radon inside your home. And the most common ones are barometric pressure.”
If it’s over 4 pCi/L or higher is considered a high level and the EPA recommends taking action to reduce radon levels.
