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z

wrote:
oddly enough the lifetime risk for non smokers is really low, like one
additional lung cancer in 100,000 people or more.

but for smokers the radon is terrible combo with smoking. like 10 more
cases in a 100,000

EPA standards assume (from statistics) risk of .0018 of lung
cancer/(pCi/L) for lifetime exposure for nonsmokers, .013 for smokers,
so at 10 pCi you're talking about 1.8% risk for 80 years of breathing
in that air fulltime (i.e. living in the basement and never going out
for 80 years) for nonsmokers, 13% for smokers. If you don't breathe in
the air full time and don't live in the basement for 80 years, then
adjust the estimates accordingly. It's not like you would need a scuba
tank to run down there twice a year to change the furnace filters.

Just ventilating the basement isn't recommended, it may result in
blowing the radon upstairs and/or into bedrooms, which would be a big
negative.

If there's a sump pump, two approaches are 1) to seal the hole airtight
and/or 2) try to ventilate the subspace by sucking the air out of the
airtight sealed sump pump hole. No idea how effective they are in real
life.