Hosted by Public Health Ontario
Increased risk of lung cancer from an environmental carcinogen exposure such as radon gas is a function of how much carcinogen is in a building, and how much time a person spends in that building over time. Over the past decade, a Canadian alliance of research and public health partners, including those involved in the Evict Radon National Study, Health Canada, and others, have integrated residential radon gas readings with housing, community, and population information to establish a symmetric understanding of radon exposure within the residential built environment. These outcomes were released as the “Cross-Canada Survey of Radon Exposure in the Residential Buildings of Urban and Rural Communities” in late 2024 and reported that 17.8% of houses in Canada exceeded the Canadian Radon Guideline of 200 Bq/m3, with profound differences based on region, urban-to-rural community, and residential building design type within Canada.
This PHO Rounds will provide an update on national radon exposure statistics for 2025 and describe the quantitative impact that these have had on Canadian health-seeking attitudes and behaviour such as lung cancer risk awareness. This session will also explain how the team communicated radon-related health risks and used the radon report findings, alongside time-use data across different environments, to estimate the Canadian population-attributable risk of lung cancer from residential radon exposure.
Presenter: Dr. Aaron Goodarzi