Your home could be killing you.

Radon is a naturally occurring radioactive gas that comes up from the earth into your home. It is the No. 2 cause of lung cancer and the No. 1 cause of lung cancer among non-smokers. In children it’s known to cause leukemia.

Radon can be anywhere in Utah. You can’t see it, smell it or taste it. It’s one of the challenges of living in God’s country.

So get your home tested. It’s cheap and it could save your life. As a Realtor I encourage buyers to have a radon inspection done as part of the general inspection during their due diligence when buying a home. If the home has a private well, get the water tested to guard against stomach cancer because it, too, could have radon in it.

Radon can be found in a particular home, for example, but maybe not in the home next door. So don’t go by your neighbor’s results. If it is found in your home getting it fixed will cost around $1,500, but that’s cheap when you consider the high cost of battling cancer. If you smoke and are living with radon you could be getting a huge whammy, much more than double.

The typical way to resolve radon issues is to install a large pipe from the ground up through the roof with a fan somewhere in between to suck the stuff out. Mitigators usually find a closet or a corner of the garage to run the pipe with the fan installed in the attic or on an outside wall, unless you opt for a passive device.

According to the Utah Department of Environmental Quality the average amount of radon found in Utah County zip codes ranges from 2.1 pCi/L (pico-Curies per liter) to 11.1 pCi/L. Anything over 4 pCi/L is considered dangerous, according to the federal Environmental Protection Agency. Those are averages. I’ve seen higher.

A buyer of a home I listed had a radon inspection as part of the purchase and found a level of 17 pCi/L. That’s almost equivalent of smoking two packs of cigarettes a day. He asked my seller to fix it, which he did.

Recently I began encouraging my sellers to have their homes pre-inspected when they listed them for sale, instead of waiting for the buyer to do it. The home inspection is the No. 1 deal killer. Often they are reluctant to do it because they don’t want to spend the $300 or so up front.

Yet it could save the sellers not only the deal, but thousands of dollars in repairs or price reductions if the buyers decide to move forward and purchase the house. After that happened to a couple of my sellers this year I decided that I would pick up the tab for the up-front inspection but they need to take care of the radon inspection, which for some inspectors is about half price when done with the general inspection. It can be a positive selling point.

Or they can buy a test kit from the DEQ or at a home store for $8 to $10 and do it themselves, plus about $40 in some cases to have the results analyzed. The important thing is that it gets done, whether you are selling your home, or not, whether it’s brand new or historically old. If you’re building a home have radon resistant features built into the house.

The State Division of Radiation Control has a plethora of information on its website including links to order a test kit, radon maps and a home buyer and seller guide including several websites for more detail. To get started go to http://www.radon.utah.gov.