ideasIdea
Mandatory radon testing when homes are sold, with subsidised mitigation
Radon gas from the ground is the second biggest cause of lung cancer. Testing every home at sale and paying for fixes in high-radon areas would prevent thousands of cases.
Radon is estimated to cause 3-14% of lung cancers depending on country, yet testing is voluntary and rare. Propose mandatory testing at property transaction in high-radon zones, with mitigation subsidies, evaluated by measured indoor radon distributions and modelled lung cancers averted.
Hypothesis
Mandatory testing at sale plus subsidies halves the proportion of homes above the action level in high-radon areas within ten years.
Rationale
Point-of-sale mandates work for energy efficiency certificates; mitigation is cheap and effective.
What would test it
Adopt in one region; compare radon levels and mitigation rates with controls.
Maturity
speculative
Who has to act
policy
Cost to try
Medium ($1M to $50M)
Years to first evidence
8
Bottlenecks it attacks
- Prevention we already have is not deployed · Around four in ten cancers are preventable with tools we already own: vaccines, tobacco control, weight, alcohol, sun and infection control.