Warning to check for radon levels

OWNERS of a house who didn’t know they were in a radon zone were being exposed to radiation equivalent to having seven chest X-rays every day.

The unwitting occupants, whose home had 10 times the safe level of radon, only discovered the potentially- deadly problem when they signed up for their home to be tested by the Radiological Protection Institute of Ireland late last year.

The house is in Co Waterford where the institute ran a radon awareness campaign last October out of concern that the county had one of the highest incidents of radon-affected homes in the country.