Really?
The Canadian limit is lower than the U.S. limit.
200 Bq/m3 is equivalent to
2.6 pCi/L( 4 pCi/L is the limit before mitigation is recommended in the U.S.)
WHO’s limit of 100 Bq/m3 or 1.3 pCi/L
Actually Michael. I don’t know where the figures came from but 1pCi/L = 37 Bq/m3, the the Canadian Guideline at 200 Bq/m3 is actually 5.4pCi/L, which is higher than the U.S. guideline and double the WHO & EU guideline.
In Addition, Health Canada do not consider short term sampling adequate even though for the Ontario Builders Warranty program a short term measurement performed according to U.S. EPA guidelines is sufficient to commence a TARION claim. Go figure! Eh!? I don’t suppose it’s because we are the second largest producer of mined Uranium Ore and raising a flag might damage our mining business??!!
Sounds like Asbestos all over again.
Sorry for the erroneous data.
I do not recall where I got it from
thanks for correcting it.
The short term sampling is bogus in my view as well but that what they gave us to work with in the US for real estate transactions so we have little choice.
4 pci/l is a bit of a joke anyway as it was based on the presumption that most home could be mitigated to that level and not risk based as far as health concerns.
NP Michael,
The funny thing is I’ve been in touch with Health Canada over the testing protocols here in Canada, (Ontario specifically), and they allow for short-term tests to see if mitigation systems work, but no to identify if a long-term test is worth doing.
I’ve read somewhere (I read a lot of stuff on Radon and I can’t find it at the moment but will continue to look, maybe someone else can verify I’m not going crazy) that the post mitigation levels should be around 1 Bq/M3, which is nuts because the background level is regarded to be around 4-5Bq/m3
The other interesting point is that once you have a C-NRPP certification in mitigation, you can go off and perform radon mitigation. Each mitigation job takes around 2 days to perform. If someone does 2 of these a week, and the homes have concentrations of 1500 Bq/m3 and up (not uncommon in the higher radon reading parts of Ontario) the mitigation workers are exposing themselves to around 8 times the safe-working level but continue to perform the work without NORM monitors.
Crazy!