Radon gas is causing more lung cancer in Canadians. Scientists are running to save lives
When Steve Blake moved into his brand new home in 1995, he felt lucky.
The house was well built. Solid construction. No leaks. The basement was comfortable enough to work in, so every weekday morning, after dropping off his kids at school, the Calgary financial advisor would set up shop in his home office downstairs.
Blake continued that routine for more than a quarter century, spending about six hours a day, five days a week, in the basement.
He had no idea that it would slowly kill him.
In 2023, at the age of 55, he suffered a severe cough. Blake wasn’t too worried at first; He felt healthy, biked regularly and had a reputation as one of Alberta’s top golfers.
Then one morning, while preparing to play a round, the father of two struggled to catch his breath. Doctors later told him the devastating news: He had stage 4 lung cancer and had only 12 to 14 months left to live.
Blake and his wife Kelly were stunned. Blake had never smoked or even been around passive smoking. The couple started researching and trying to find out what could be the reason for such a dire predicament.
One word kept coming up again and again: radon.
This odorless, invisible and highly poisonous gas can accumulate inside your home. When Blake installed a radon monitor in his basement late last year, its average readings were consistently high during the winter months.
“There’s no test or blood test that they can take from me that can conclusively say, ‘It was your basement that gave you this cancer, it’s the house that’s going to kill you,’ ” Blake said during an interview with CBC News in December. Still, the prospects bother him.
“All these years, what was I breathing?”
Radon gas is invisible, poisonous and millions of Canadians have no idea it is hidden in their homes. For The National, CBC’s Lauren Pelley explains the health risks and what you can do to keep your home safe.
Annual radon-induced lung cancer deaths likely number in the thousands
No one wants to imagine that their health could be at risk in their home, but when radon gets inside, that’s exactly what happens.
This naturally occurring gas comes out of the ground when uranium in soil and rock breaks down. When it is dissolved in the air, or in someone’s home, it is not a health concern Radon Mitigation System To release the gas safely.
But when radon builds up indoors and is inhaled over time, it exposes people to radiation that wreaks slow and steady havoc on their lung cells.
Radon-induced lung cancer kills An estimated 3,200 Canadians each yearAnd lung cancer, in general, remains the deadliest type of cancer in Canada, even though smoking rates have declined dramatically in recent decades.
Yet radon is not included in cancer screening criteria and — as Blake says — there are no existing tests to prove that someone has had a dangerous, long-term exposure.
A group of cross-Canada scientists is now hoping to change that, by developing innovative ways to test for radon exposure using something most of us throw away: toenail clippings.
Dustin Pearson, University of Calgary-based research operations manager for the evicted radon study, admits that studying toenails may seem “a little strange” at first, but there’s a good reason for it.
“There’s something in them that we can actually measure,” he explained.
When you inhale radon, it turns into a type of radioactive lead that is excreted in slow-growing body tissues such as your skin, hair and nails. (Toenails in particular have the lowest exposure to chemicals and cleaners that could contaminate the samples.)
Team collecting 10K toenail samples
The team aims to collect 10,000 samples from across the country, along with radon monitoring data from participants’ homes.
This phase of the research, funded by the Canadian Cancer Society and scheduled to end by 2028, aims to confirm promising results from a much smaller study that showed nail clippers contained measurable lead over a decade.
Biochemist Aaron Goodarzi, a professor at the University of Calgary’s Cumming School of Medicine who leads the Evict Radon project, said his team is expecting a “tsunami of toenails” in the coming year.
When those samples arrive, they are broken down with strong acids inside a special metal-free laboratory. The resulting toenail mixture – a “slurry” or “soup,” as the team calls it – is passed through a sealed slot to be analyzed in a mass spectrometer, a large instrument that uses electric and magnetic fields to separate the lead from any other chemical elements present.
The goal is to find a way to show one’s personal, long-term radon exposure in the hopes of influencing lung cancer screening criteria, which, to date, have focused on moderate and heavy smokers.
“We’re looking for a radon signature in that tissue so we can develop a non-invasive or minimally invasive test to determine people’s lifetime exposure to radon, so they can be included in the screening criteria,” said Dr. Alison Wallace, a Halifax-based thoracic surgeon and member of the researcher team.
The timing is critical, because Canadian medical teams “are now seeing a shift in the development of lung cancer in more and more non-smokers,” he said.
4 out of 10 homes are unaware of radon
Despite its link to cancer, understanding of the increased risks of radon in Canada is limited.
“Public awareness is very low … and so most people don’t seek it out,” said Dr. Christian Finlay, co-chair of the National Lung Cancer Action Plan with the Canadian Cancer Society and a thoracic surgeon at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.
more than this Four out of 10 homes are unaware of radonEven the latest cross-Canada radon survey released by the Evict Radon team in 2024 shows as many as 10 million Canadian households could be at risk, federal data shows.
And the problem is becoming worse.
The research found that radon levels in about 18 per cent of residences in Canada are at or above the current national guideline of 200 becquerels – the standard unit of radioactivity, which refers to the rate of nuclear decay – per meter cubed (Bq/m).3). This is up from about seven percent of households in the late 2000s.
Scientists suspect that the increase is due to modern construction techniques, which make homes more airtight to trap heat – and, by extension, radon.
Limited lung cancer screening in Canada
Although greater public awareness and home mitigation efforts can prevent people from being exposed to radon, the danger remains throughout the country. The ultimate goal of Evict Radon’s years-long Toenail research is to save lives, Goodarzi said.
Long-term exposure to radon radiation completely “bulldozes” cellular DNA, he adds, yet most people don’t even realize they are developing lung cancer. This frightening form of cancer is often caught late because symptoms do not appear early, and when they do appear, they are often similar to many regular respiratory infections. By that time, the cancer is usually widespread.
On the other hand, if caught early, lung cancer can often be cured through surgery and other treatments, and many patients live long lives, said Finley, a thoracic surgeon at McMaster University.
Despite advances in treatment, only BC and Ontario have permanent lung cancer screening programs to catch cases early – with narrow eligibility that includes moderate or heavy smoking.
BC is the only province running a pilot project that screens people living in homes with high radon levels.
Run by the BC Cancer Agency, the “first of its kind” trial focuses on non-smokers who live in homes with radon levels up to 800 Bq/m.3 or more, or at least four times the Health Canada guideline, National Collaborating Center for Environmental Health notes.
Kelly Bush, the federal department’s manager of radon outreach, said Health Canada is trying to encourage other provincial screening programs to consider radon in their criteria, “so that Canadians who are exposed to it can be screened for lung cancer.” (Health Canada’s National Radon Program also supports the Evict Radon study.)
‘It’s worth the money’
Back in Calgary, Steve and Kelly Blake struggle to understand why all levels of government aren’t doing more to protect homeowners from the risks of radon. Kelly said expanded cancer screenings across the country could help catch more cases of lung cancer early, before it’s too late.
“If we get more information about radon gas and the potential dangers, you’ll get more data and eventually it could be a criterion – a risk factor – so that a non-smoker can get tested early,” she said.
Blake, who is hoping to survive as long as possible through every available cancer treatment, can’t shake the feeling that his home was always a danger zone.
Standing in his basement in December, with the back of his radon monitor flashing red repeatedly, Blake said he wished he had known more about radon when he first built the house.
He and Kelly planned to install a mitigation system next week at a cost of about $2,600.
“For us,” he said, “it’s worth the money.”
