Don't let your dream home become a nightmare! Buying or owning a home involves making decisions that can affect the lives each member of your family for years. Most buyers spend more time picking out paint colors than they do thinking about indoor air quality. Yet, the EPA and many health organizations warn that the air in our homes can make us sick, or worse.

If you are buying or selling your home check out EPA's Breathing Easy online video. This video will explain how simple it is to deal with radon during a real estate transaction. You will learn where radon comes from, how it gets into our homes, testing methods and how to deal with it if elevated levels are discovered (this is a large file so allow plenty of time for the movie to load).

If you are skeptical that Radon is a health risk, we suggest you watch the Community Awareness video from the American Association of Radon Scientists and Technologists. You will hear testimony from people who have never smoked but developed lung cancer after being exposed to elevated levels of radon.

In addition to lung cancer, the scientific community has linked exposure to radon to genetic damage to the body’s p53 tumor suppressor gene. There is considerable scientific evidence showing that mutated genes can be passed on to future generations, thereby providing an environmental link to why certain families tend to be susceptible to various types of cancer.

Today's homes are built to be energy efficient...which is a good thing if you control the pollutants generated by normal living. No one would consider eliminating exhaust fans or building a fireplace without a chimney... yet that is what we do when we fail to control the entry of air (soil gas) from the soil which surrounds a home's foundation.

This air can contain chemicals which we apply to our lawns, termiticides used to treat wood destroying insects or methane from decomposing organic materials (trash) that may have been dumped on the very ground a home is built upon.

Think about it. We are the first generation in our country to live in energy efficient housing. No wonder physicians are seeing an alarming increase in the number of children and adults who develop allergies. It takes only one square inch of mold to release 500,000 spores into the air we breathe! These spores can incubate in the soil of a crawl space or the drainage systems beneath a basement floor. The simple act of turning on a bathroom fan can draw these spores into the home. Most homes with crawl spaces have leaky ductwork that act, like a powerful vacuum cleaner, drawing all sorts of bad substances into the living space.