Under the radon
Radon mitigation at Bread Springs Head Start

ABOVE: Al Lee with the Crownpoint Agency Head Start program works on fixing a hole in the ceiling next to where a pipe that carries radon from the basement and releases it through the roof at the Head Start in Bread Springs on Thursday. Lee and several others participated in a workshop and hands on training session put on by the Navajo Nation Environmental Protection Agency to teach area maintenance technicians how to mitigate radon in the their facility. RIGHT: A system monitor is installed to make sure the radon mitigation system is functioning properly.— © 2008 Gallup Independent / Brian Leddy

Copyright © 2008
Gallup Independent
By Kathy Helms
Diné Bureau

BREAD SPRINGS — What you don’t see CAN hurt you. Like radon — a colorless, odorless radioactive gas that can lead to lung cancer as a result of long-term exposure.

Last week, 25 trainees from Head Start, Indian Health Service, Navajo Nation Facility Maintenance and Employee Housing received radon mitigation training at Bread Springs Head Start, or Baa Haa Li Olta Yazhi, for the pilot project.

Navajo Nation Environmental Protection Agency contracted with Brad Turk, Environmental Building Sciences Inc., and Jack Hughes, Southern Regional Radon Training Center, to provide hands-on instruction. With what they learned, tribal representatives will be able to test buildings across the Nation and install radon systems where needed.

Vivian Craig of Navajo EPA said the safe standard for radon is less than 4.0 picocuries per liter, or pCi/l. When the Bread Springs center was tested, the reading was 4.6 pCi/l. After installation of the mitigation system, which basically sucks the radon out from under the building and vents it to the outside, the reading was 0.7-0.8 pCi/l.

The reading at the chapter house next door was less than 2.0 pCi/l and the senior center had not yet been sampled.
“This is the first mitigation in Head Start,” Craig said.

“According to Brad, we have probably enough supplies to do two or three more. We have some hot centers out there.”

Navajo EPA received a grant to pay for supplies and instructors, and U.S. EPA has provided Navajo EPA with 200 free test canisters from its laboratory in Las Vegas.

There are 182 Head Start centers across the reservation. This year, Navajo employees have tested 36 centers in Eastern Agency and 11 in Western Agency. According to Turk, the objective of the training was for trainees to go in, do their evaluations and testing, look at the test results, then design a radon mitigation system and install it.

“There are four different types of systems. Most commonly, you put in an active soil depressurization system. That is what we did here,” he said. “You’re actually trying to reverse the pressures that occur naturally in a building, so that instead of the building drawing radon out of the soil, you actually collect the radon below the building before it can come in.

“In a school like this, you also have to keep in mind things like keeping the equipment out of the way of the kids,” he said. They installed a 4-inch PVC pipe in an out-of-the-way area by drilling a hole and running pipe down through the concrete. The top portion extends into the attic, where a fan is installed, and the radon is vented above the roof to the outside.

The school is made up of two sections built in different time periods, which complicated the matter. “There was a definite difference in the construction and soil compaction,” said Philip Smith of Eastern Agency Building Maintenance in Crownpoint. “They tried it in one corner, but there were cracks in the concrete so they weren’t sucking out much radon.”

The installation plan was modified and two separate systems installed — one in the older classroom section and another in the office of the addition.

Larry Wilson of Indian Health Service in Chinle found out about radon after high readings were found in the IHS housing area and residents had to be moved out. Wilson has since installed 19 passive mitigation systems in the units and is now doing long-term testing.

“Probably in February or March we’ll take the test kits down and if we still have readings of greater than 4.0, then he’ll know how to install the fans,” Craig said.

When Wilson first started the installation in Chinle, he could smell mold coming from openings in the floors. “I packed them with concrete and set up the mitigation. Now, when you walk into the houses, you can’t smell anything. I think that made a lot of difference. That’s why I’m also anxious about my reading, to see what it’s going to be.”

Trainer Jack Hughes said that with the training Navajo employees received, they can now deal with the radon problems themselves as they come up. “They don’t have to worry about hiring contractors — they’re right there.”

The Southwest doesn’t have a monopoly when it comes to radon, according to Hughes.

“There are areas in the country where it’s very prevalent. You don’t see the really screaming high concentrations in the Midwest that you might see back East in eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey, or even some places down in the mid-South — Kentucky, Tennessee – where there are a lot of caves and some very strong uranium deposits. The geology has a lot to do with it in terms of how much gets to the surface,” he said.

Lindsey Mescal of Employee Housing Maintenance who participated in the Bread Springs training, said, “You would think that a building like this would be safe, but then you find the radon levels as high as they were and then with what we did, how much it dropped.

“We have a lot of buildings out there, so this will help us to see if they do, in fact, have some radon in them, how best to work with them and how best to alleviate some of these problems.

“Our responsibility is to make sure these housing units are safe and livable. A lot of our housing units are a little bit older than what they have here. Just having to do the work on it is going to take a while. But having knowledge like this helps you go a long way, whereas, if you didn’t have this knowledge, you’d be going through it in the dark.”