Radon in Schools

I was at a public meeting recently and I heard an ill informed opposition politician woffling on about radon and about why doesn't the government go and start testing schools in high radon areas. For the record The Department of Education & Science have lead the way in dealing with the radon problem. They have had a policy for some time of testing every classroom in every school in Ireland. At this stage 99% of schools have been tested and any school with high radon concentrations has had remediation work carried out. In fact the Department have exceeded their legal obligations in terms of mitigating radon levels in schools.
The problem in my experience is that when some schools find they have high radon levels the teachers and parents alike make a song and dance about it, there is a major panic and ghost busters from Wexford get called in in a hurry to fix the radon problem.
But could you get any of these excited parents or teachers to test or fix their own houses? Not a hope!

I got a phone call from a lady in Waterford before Xmas. She had gotten a letter the previous day from the RPII saying the she had a radon level of 800 Bq/m3 in her home and she was in a major state of panic over this. She told me she couldn't sleep last night worrying about it so I told her it was nothing to get too worried about and that I would drop down next day and have a look at the house. I went down to see her and lo and behold hadn't she gotten herself so worked up over the radon problem that she had gone back on the fags. She is chain smoking away goodo while she is asking me what we are going to do about this radon problem. I said to her that the first thing we should do about the radon problem is give up the fags. Needless to say she didn't want to hear about it. Well I got a days work out of it, put in sump and a couple of air vents which got the levels down. Met her on the street at Xmas, delighted with the job, smoking away for Ireland!
The mind boggles with radon sometimes, it's Friday, I'm off to find a high stool in a smoke free zone!