Mandate and Vision

While radon causes many thousands of new lung cancer diagnoses annually, knowledge to meaningfully reduce exposure (or intervene at the earliest stages before clinical manifestation) is unacceptably low. It is our goal to be impactful by massively increasing the radon ‘literacy’ of the Canadian population, systematically determining detailed human radon dosimetry across the nation, encouraging radon reduction by understanding both building metric and (modifiable) human behavioural radon risk factors, identifying those potentially at risk of radon-induced malignancy, and developing the essential knowledge and tools needed to refer them for future screening based on novel, next-generation methods fuelled by expert knowledge of DNA damage repair biology. We aim for nothing less than building the essential knowledge needed to ‘evict’ radon as a future source of lung cancer, saving thousands of lives and billions in health care costs. To achieve this, we will:

• Raise radon ‘literacy’ within the general population using a science engagement approach merged with next-generation communication methods and social media platforms,

• Enable research aimed at understanding chronic radon exposure in our changing world and

• Define community intervention solutions applicable within the Canadian context to eliminate radon as a source of cancer in the future.

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The Evict Radon Initiative combines grassroots science engagement and citizen science-based research in a way perhaps never seen before for cancer prevention in Canada. Evict Radon is led by Dr. Aaron Goodarzi, the federally-appointed Canada Research Chair for Radiation Exposure Disease, who has two decades of experience in radiation biology and is considered a leader in radon gas research in Canada. Dr. Goodarzi coordinates a confederation of scholars and thought-leaders across disciplines, including biology, geology, physics, chemistry, psychology, architecture, communications and epidemiology, who have the collective goal of understanding radon “exposomics” and protecting Canadians from the negative consequences of exposure.

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For more information or to test your home for radon (whilst also contributing data to research efforts), please visit www.evictradon.ca.