What Happens If You Ignore a High Radon Result?
Nothing acute happens. Radon is a long-term exposure risk, not an immediate one, so a high result is a reason to act within weeks rather than to leave the house. What does not go away is the disclosure: once you know, you know, and Pennsylvania's seller disclosure asks about it. Deferring generally means paying for it later at a buyer's price rather than your own.
The honest health framing
Radon is the second leading cause of lung cancer in the United States after smoking, according to the EPA. That is a real and serious statistic, and it is also a statement about populations and decades rather than about your next month.
Risk scales with concentration and with duration of exposure. Nothing detectable happens over a week. What accumulates is a small elevation in lifetime risk that gets larger the longer the exposure runs and the higher the number is.
So the honest answer to "how urgent is this" is: urgent enough to handle in the next few weeks, not urgent enough to disrupt your life over. Anyone selling on the basis that your family is in immediate danger is overselling, and that is worth knowing when you take the quotes.
Who has most to gain from acting
- Smokers and former smokers. The two risks multiply rather than add, and the difference is large. See radon decay products
- Anyone with a bedroom, office or regularly used room on the lowest level. Exposure is hours multiplied by concentration
- Households planning to finish a basement, which converts a storage space into a lived-in one. See basement finishing
- Anyone with a very high result, above about 20 pCi/L, where the same number of years delivers a much larger dose
- Long-term occupants. Somebody who will be in the house for twenty more years has twenty years of exposure at stake
The part that definitely will not go away
The health question is probabilistic. The disclosure question is not.
Pennsylvania's Real Estate Seller Disclosure Law requires a completed property disclosure statement covering known material defects, and the state form asks about known radon testing and mitigation. Once you have a result, you have knowledge, and the form asks about knowledge.
What that means in practice is that a deferred mitigation is not avoided, it is scheduled for the worst possible moment: during a transaction, with a closing date set, with a buyer's agent pricing the repair request on the worst case they can imagine rather than on a contractor's scope.
The arithmetic of waiting
| Doing it now | Doing it during a sale |
|---|---|
| You pick the contractor | You pick whoever is available that week |
| You get three quotes | You take the one that can start Monday |
| Priced on your foundation | Priced on the buyer's imagination, or a credit sized the same way |
| No deadline pressure | A closing date |
| You disclose a resolved item with a certificate | You disclose an open item and negotiate |
| Years of reduced exposure in the meantime | None |
Note that both rows cost roughly the same in contractor terms. A standard system is commonly $800 to $2,500 depending on the foundation, and that does not change because there is a closing date. What changes is everything around it. See radon and home sales and what it costs.
If you are genuinely going to defer
Sometimes the money is not there this month, and that is a real constraint rather than a failure of resolve. In that case there are things worth doing that cost little:
- Confirm the result with a second test, so you know what you are actually deferring. A kit is about fifteen dollars
- Reduce time spent in the lowest level. Move a bedroom or a desk upstairs if the number is high. Exposure is hours multiplied by concentration, and you control the hours
- Seal the sump pit if it is open. Sometimes a useful reduction, always worth doing before a system goes in anyway. See sump pumps and radon
- Do not smoke indoors. The interaction is the single largest modifier available to you
- Do a long-term test while you wait, so you know the annual average rather than a snapshot
- Keep the paperwork, because you will need it at disclosure regardless
- Set a date. A deferral with a date is a plan; one without is a decision you made without noticing
What not to do
- Buy an air purifier and consider it handled. It does not remove the gas. See radon decay products
- Seal cracks and assume without retesting. See sealing cracks
- Have uncertified work done to save money. In Pennsylvania that is an illegal transaction and it will not satisfy a buyer's agent
- Retest repeatedly hoping for a lower number. Levels vary, and picking the most convenient reading is not a method
- Assume a neighbour's low result applies to you. It does not. See York County radon levels
Common questions
Do I need to move out?
No. Even a very high result is a long-term exposure question, not an acute hazard. If the number is extreme it is reasonable to reduce time spent in the lowest level while you arrange the work, but nobody needs to leave the house.
What if I am selling in a few years anyway?
Then you will be dealing with it under someone else's deadline and at a price they set. A documented system installed on your schedule is almost always cheaper than the credit a buyer asks for, because their number is priced on the worst case they can imagine.
Can I just not test, so I do not know?
You can, and the seller disclosure asks about known testing, so not knowing is not a lie. It is also not a plan. The buyer's inspector will test during the transaction, and then you are handling it with a closing date already set.
Have a number you want read?
Tell us the result and your town in York County, or call and read it out. We will tell you what it points to and what a system would involve in a house like yours.
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