Should you get a Radon Test for your new home?

When you’re buying a house, you should have it professionally inspected.  Sure, everyone knows that.  And in this day and age, with so many foreclosures on the market, mold testing has become quite common.  But what about radon testing?  Should you do it?

Radon is not tested as often as it should be, even though over a third of all homes tested for radon do actually contain high levels of radon.  After smoking, radon is the number 2 cause of lung cancer in the United States.  And it’s everywhere, because it starts in the soil. 

Then why don’t more people test their homes for radon?  Well, you can’t see it, and you can’t smell it.  It has no color and no odor.  People tend to be less concerned about things that they cannot sense in any way.  However, radon is even more dangerous because of its invisibility.  People tend to assume they do not have a radon problem, when they very well might.

You are not required to perform a radon test on your home.  But if you do complete a radon test and find that radon is in fact present in your home, all is not lost.  Radon can be mitigated, and people do it all the time!