Make invisible risk measurable.
Radon cannot be seen, smelled, or managed by assumption. Healthcare leaders can turn it into a disciplined portfolio, workforce, and community-health priority.
The leadership signal
Healthgrades lists Radon Awareness Month throughout January. Federal agencies recognize the same period as National Radon Action Month, a name that makes the leadership expectation unmistakable: awareness should lead to measurement, mitigation, and verified protection.
Radon is a naturally occurring radioactive gas produced as uranium, thorium, and radium break down in rock and soil. It can enter through foundations and accumulate indoors without a visible sign or odor. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency identifies radon as the leading cause of lung cancer among people who do not smoke and the second-leading cause overall.
Map the full healthcare portfolio
Bring every owned, leased, clinical, residential, education, and community asset into one risk picture.
Radon exposure develops quietly. There may be no immediate symptoms, while health consequences can take years to emerge. The National Cancer Institute explains that inhaled radioactive particles from radon decay can damage cells lining the lungs. Lung cancer is the only cancer definitively linked to inhaled radon exposure.
Healthcare organizations may have risk considerations across hospitals, clinics, administrative offices, childcare facilities, education centers, behavioral-health residences, senior living properties, employee housing, and leased community sites. Ground-contact rooms and frequently occupied lower levels deserve particular attention, but a complex building requires a protocol appropriate to its footprint, mechanical systems, occupancy, and jurisdiction.
Portfolio exposure map
Owned + leased + community
Measure
Testing is the only way to determine indoor radon concentration. Use building-appropriate standards, qualified professionals, and documented quality controls.
Mitigate
Treat an elevated result as an open corrective action until the intervention is complete and post-mitigation testing verifies performance.
Maintain
Track systems, inspections, renovation triggers, retesting dates, and responsible owners in the same infrastructure used for other facility risks.
A four-part radon control pipeline
Govern the work, inventory every asset, control the finding, then extend prevention into the community.
Govern
Set policy, scope, accountability, escalation rules, professional qualifications, and authority for testing and corrective action.
Inventory
Map every owned and leased property, occupied ground-contact space, prior result, mitigation system, renovation, and documentation gap.
Control
Test under the applicable protocol, assess elevated results, fund mitigation, verify performance, and close corrective actions.
Extend
Equip employees, patients, and communities with accurate home-testing guidance and connections to qualified resources.
Use the right standard for the building
Consumer home-testing guidance is valuable for public education, but a hospital campus, medical office building, school, or mixed-use property is not simply a larger house. Shared structures can contain many ground-contact rooms, multiple ventilation zones, pressure relationships, varied occupancy patterns, and access constraints.
EPA recognizes ANSI/AARST standards for measuring radon in multifamily, school, commercial, and mixed-use buildings, for mitigating those properties, and for incorporating soil-gas controls into new large buildings. Healthcare organizations should use credentialed professionals and follow all applicable state, local, and Tribal requirements for measurement and mitigation.
For homes, EPA recommends corrective action at 4 picocuries per liter, or 150 becquerels per cubic meter, or higher. It also recommends considering reduction between 2 and 4 pCi/L because no known exposure level is completely without risk. The 4 pCi/L figure is an action level, not a declaration that lower concentrations are safe and not a universal legal limit for every property type or jurisdiction.
Facilities decision matrix
Use asset context to route the right questions before testing, renovation, acquisition, or lease decisions.
The matrix is a leadership planning aid. The measurement and mitigation protocol must still be selected by qualified professionals under applicable standards and requirements.
| Asset context | Portfolio lens | Planning cue |
|---|---|---|
| Hospitals and clinics | Ground-contact rooms, occupied lower levels, ventilation zones, access constraints | Match testing scope and quality controls to the building footprint and operating environment. |
| Offices and support sites | Owned versus leased status, prior records, frequently occupied spaces | Document responsibility, testing history, escalation, and corrective-action authority. |
| Residential properties | Behavioral-health residences, senior living, and employee housing | Use residential or multifamily standards appropriate to the property and jurisdiction. |
| Childcare and education | Long-duration occupancy and shared-building conditions | Use the recognized school, commercial, or mixed-use approach that fits the structure. |
| Leased community sites | Landlord records, lease rights, mitigation ownership, documentation gaps | Treat missing evidence as an open information gap and define the escalation path. |
| Projects and transactions | Acquisitions, new construction, foundation work, renovation, and HVAC change | Build radon review into due diligence, capital planning, design, and project closeout. |
Six executive decisions that turn awareness into control
Name an accountable sponsor
Connect facilities, environmental health and safety, real estate, risk, occupational health, oncology, community benefit, legal, procurement, and communications under one executive owner.
Define the portfolio
Include owned, leased, residential, clinical, administrative, education, childcare, and community properties. Treat absent records as an information gap, not evidence of low risk.
Approve a testing standard
Specify building-appropriate protocols, qualified providers, chain of custody, quality assurance, result review, retesting, and escalation responsibilities.
Pre-fund corrective action
Create procurement and capital pathways before results arrive so elevated readings do not wait through repeated committee cycles.
Verify risk reduction
Require post-mitigation testing, commissioning records, maintenance ownership, warranties, alarms where applicable, and future verification dates.
Support home testing
Use occupational health and community-benefit channels to provide clear education, discounted kits where feasible, multilingual resources, and state-program referrals.
The test-to-mitigate pipeline
An elevated reading opens a corrective action. Verified performance closes it.
An elevated test result is not a completed intervention. It should initiate a documented response that includes confirmation when required, professional building diagnostics, an approved corrective plan, mitigation, post-mitigation measurement, and ongoing maintenance.
Depending on the structure, mitigation may include soil depressurization, venting, sealing selected entry routes, or other measures informed by qualified diagnostics. EPA reports that some residential systems can reduce radon by as much as 99 percent, but performance, design, and cost depend on the building. Leaders should avoid promising a universal result or calling a remediated property “radon-free.”
Major renovations, foundation work, HVAC changes, and changes in building use should trigger review because they can alter pressure relationships and radon entry. Radon controls should also appear in acquisition due diligence, lease negotiations, capital planning, new construction, and facility-condition assessments.
The executive radon scorecard
Report whether the portfolio is known, the response is moving, and every control remains verifiable.
| Domain | Measure | Executive question |
|---|---|---|
| Portfolio | Percentage of properties with a documented radon assessment and complete test history | Do we know where the information gaps are? |
| Measurement | Percentage of in-scope properties tested under the approved protocol | Are we measuring risk consistently? |
| Response | Elevated results; median days to approved mitigation plan and completed work | Does a finding reliably trigger action? |
| Verification | Percentage of mitigated sites with documented post-mitigation results | Can we prove that risk was reduced? |
| Maintenance | Percentage of systems with current inspection, alarm, and maintenance records | Are controls still functioning as designed? |
| Governance | Acquisitions, leases, renovations, and capital projects receiving radon review | Is radon embedded in routine decisions? |
A practical 90-day leadership plan
Move from policy and inventory to measurement, action, verification, and executive reporting.
Define and map
- Appoint the executive sponsor and operational owner.
- Approve the policy, scope, professional qualifications, and escalation path.
- Build the property inventory and collect prior testing and mitigation records.
- Identify jurisdiction-specific requirements and documentation gaps.
Measure and prepare
- Prioritize frequently occupied ground-contact and residential spaces.
- Engage qualified professionals for complex or shared buildings.
- Launch testing with approved quality-assurance procedures.
- Prepare communications, procurement, and funding pathways before results arrive.
Reduce and verify
- Escalate elevated findings under the approved standard.
- Assign mitigation owners, budgets, and completion dates.
- Complete post-mitigation testing before closing corrective actions.
- Report results and future review dates to the responsible executive committee.
Turn awareness into infrastructure.
Radon cannot be managed through visual inspection, regional assumptions, or a January message alone. It requires measurement, professional response, and sustained oversight.
Radon Awareness Month 2026 gives healthcare leaders a practical opening to build that infrastructure. Test appropriate spaces, correct elevated levels, educate the workforce, support community prevention, and report progress. The mandate is straightforward: know where risk may exist, measure it correctly, act on what the data shows, and verify that people are better protected.
Authoritative resources
- EPA: National Radon Action Month
- EPA: Radon Action Level
- EPA: Radon Standards of Practice
- EPA: Map of Radon Zones
- National Cancer Institute: Radon and Cancer
- CDC: Radon Awareness Week 2026
- EPA: Find Testing and Mitigation Resources
Reviewed August 2026. This executive brief supports organizational planning and education. It does not replace building-specific professional guidance, applicable law, or state and local requirements.
