
Radon is a naturally occuring radioactive gas and parts of the Breckland area are classfied as "radon affected areas".
Perhaps you have heard about radon affecting your area, and are wondering whether you should take the test. Perhaps you have taken the test but feel you don't know enough about what it means. Either way, these pages are for you. They tell you what radon is, where it is found, what the dangers are - and explain the good news that the measures needed to get rid of radon problems are easy, effective and relatively inexpensive.
In some areas of the UK, naturally occurring radon poses a health risk to a relatively small number of people in their homes. Since 1987 over 400,000 Government-funded tests have been carried out by the National Radiological Protection Board (NRPB) on individual buildings. These have enabled it to build up a country-wide map of radon levels, and helped thousands of individual householders to make their homes safe. The Government is using the map as the basis for its action plan. On 1st April 2005 the NRPB merged with the Health Protection Agency (HPA).
The Government wants people who may be at risk to test their homes for radon, and to follow up with radon reduction measures if they find there is a problem. Even though only a small proportion of the UK population are actually affected by radon, everyone should know the facts - so read on using these links to the defra Central Government website:
DOWNLOADS
You will need the Adobe Reader sofware to view these documents, it is available by clicking this link that will open in a new browser window - you can close that window after the download and our website will still be available for you to browse.
Radon: A Householders Guide (link to defra website to download the PDF document)
Breckland's Radon leaflet (PDF document, 139Kb)
|