SALT LAKE CITY — Almost 15 years ago, doctors were treating Charlie McQuinn for lymphoma when they caught an unrelated lung cancer, he said.
“There's no nerve endings in your lungs, so if you have lung cancer, you don't know it until it reaches out through your lungs. Then it's very painful, but then it's too late normally,” said McQuinn. “That's why the survival rate is so low.”
A rare survivor, McQuinn now educates friends, family and neighbors about the dangers of the odorless, colorless gas.
“The radon gas comes up through cracks in the basement floor, and my office had been downstairs in the basement for several years, and so that's likely how I got it,” he said.
According to data from Alpha Energy Laboratories, almost half of Utah homes have dangerous radon levels.
“It’s a common misconception that only homes that have basements would have radon, and homes that are what's called slab-on-grade don't have a chance of having radon,” said T.J. Mellars, General Manager of Utah Radon Services. “That's simply not true.”
Luckily, Utahns can get a free radon test for their homes. If your levels are high, a mitigation system will probably cost you somewhere around $1,700 to $2,000, said Mellars.
There's a lot of work to do to educate the whole state of Utah that radon is common here, and that a lot of these lung cancer cases are preventable if we're doing the right things to help make that happen,” he said.
The radon mitigation system in McQuinn’s house, which requires virtually no maintenance, was a small price to pay, he said.
“The cost of mitigation is very low compared to all that grief and pain,” he said. “I had lung surgery and lost most of my left lung from it, but I'm still here.”
You can learn more about ordering a radon test kit for free for your home here.
