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HOW RADON GETS INTO THE HOME.
Like
all of the radioactive elements radon has a half life. It decays at a
steady rate so that after a certain time any given quantity of radon will
be reduced by half the original amount. Compared to Uranium 238 which
has a half life of 4.5 billion years and radium which has a half life
of 1630 years, radon has a very short half life of a mere 3.7 days. In
addition to its extremely short life span radon also differs from its
parental elements in one other very important way. While uranium and radium
are metals trapped in the soil. Radon is a gas and because of this metamorphic
change it behaves very differently. Radon escapes from t he soil.
From the instant of its formation the gas begins
to move towards the surface. It follows the path of least resistance
in much the same way that water tends to flow towards its lowest level
in accordance with the demands of gravity. Radon moves upwards through
the soil in accordance with the negative pressure zones within the soil.
 Negative
pressure is best thought of as empty space. It can also be visualized
as a vacuum because there is always a pressure differential that exists
between empty space and occupied space. From our perspective it would
seem that there would be very little empty space available in the soil.
From the perspective of an atom, however, this is not true. In the microcosm
as well as the macrocosm the void is everywhere.
It is true that the nature of the soil; influences
the speed that radon gas reaches the surface.  Clay
and loamy soils are much denser and consequently more difficult for
the gas to move through. Sandy soil because of its granular nature provides
a much more rapid medium for migration since the gas can work its way
rapidly around each of the individual particles.
This is how the radon gas gets into the home. Each
dwelling is in effect a negative pressure point in the soil. All houses
tend to act like a vacuum
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