Portland State Magazine Spring 2013

16 PORTLAND STATE MAGAZINE SPRING 2013 improvement store. You just open the kit and place it in your basement. Material in the kit reacts to radon in the air. After a week, you send the kit to a lab, and the lab sends back a reading, measured in picocuries per liter. Anything over 4 picocuries per liter is considered high. Testing is included in the price of the kit. For $25, you can get a longer-term, more accurate test kit. It’s made of a different material, and it’s placed in a home for three months. “It gives you a better picture of what’s going on,” Burns says. Brett Sherry, the state radon officer with the Oregon Health Authority gathers test results from the manufacturers of the kits, and that’s where Burns got the data for the recent mapping study. Sherry says his office is too small to do the mapping work. As a result, Burns plays a valuable role in the state’s effort to get the word out about radon. Burns enlisted students Tamara Linde, Kassie Lindsey, and Hilary Whit- ney to crunch the test numbers, sort them by zip code, and plot the results on a map. The experience was eye-opening for Whitney, who talked with the owners of private radon testing companies in Portland. Their test results showed that one house could test radically different than one next door. The difference is often the result of the home’s condition. A home with cracked basement walls that let in radon gas can have a much higher read- ing than one with no cracks, even if they’re right next to each other. “So the risk of being exposed to radon is really not guaranteed to be dis- tributed evenly in a given neighborhood or area, and that’s why the EPA, local radon testing companies, and those of us who are studying radon at PSU recommend that every home be tested for radon gas. Because you never know,” Whitney says. Burns couldn’t agree more. He says the data his team gathered showed that Portland in general had twice the national average of homes with radon levels higher than 4 picocuries per liter, and that it’s in everyone’s best interest to do a home test. “We will probably generate another 20,000 to 30,000 tests in the Portland area as a result of our findings,” he says.  John Kirkland, a staff member in the PSU Office of University Communications, wrote “Stop-Motion Magic” in the winter 2013 Portland State Magazine. HOW RADON ENTERS A HOUSE Windows Cracks Cracks Granite Sediment THEOREGON IDEA THE OREGON IDEA THE OREGON IDEA THE OREGON IDEA SUPPORT I NG S TUDENTS , COMMUN I T Y COL L EGE S AND UN I V E R S I T I E S TO BU I LD A BE T T E R OR EGON SUPPORT I NG S TUDENTS , COMMUN I T Y COL L EGE S AND UN I V E R S I T I E S TO BU I LD A BE T T E R OR EGON Students and families pay more when the state invests less A university education may soon be out of reach for many Oregonians, who now pay 20 percent above the national average for a college or university education. The Oregon Legislature is making decisions this spring that will determine the cost of an education at Portland State and at the other state universities. It’s worth it to invest in higher education, which creates more than $6 billion dollars in economic impact for the state each year. The Oregon Idea is a statewide nonprofit group that advocates for affordable college opportunities for all Oregonians. Join The Oregon Idea to keep tuition affordable theoregonidea.com 503-595-7619 Advertisement