While radon is the second most frequent cause of lung cancer, it is the number one cause among non-smokers, according to EPA estimates. About 2,900 of these deaths occur among people who have never smoked. According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, radon is the second most frequent cause of lung cancer, after cigarette smoking, causing 21,000 lung cancer deaths per year in the United States. Radon is a contaminant that affects indoor air quality worldwide. Radon can also occur in ground water – for example, in some spring waters and hot springs.Įpidemiological studies have shown a clear link between breathing high concentrations of radon and incidence of lung cancer. Despite its short lifetime, radon gas from natural sources can accumulate in buildings, especially, due to its high density, in low areas such as basements and crawl spaces. It is often the single largest contributor to an individual's background radiation dose, but due to local differences in geology, the level of the radon-gas hazard differs from location to location. Unlike all the other intermediate elements in the aforementioned decay chains, radon is, under normal conditions, gaseous and easily inhaled.
Since thorium and uranium are two of the most common radioactive elements on Earth, and since their isotopes have very long half-lives, on the order of billions of years, radon will be present in nature long into the future in spite of its short half-life as it is continually being regenerated. Its most stable isotope, 222Rn, has a half-life of 3.8 days. It occurs naturally as an intermediate step in the normal radioactive decay chains through which thorium and uranium slowly decay into lead radon, itself, is a decay product of radium. It is a radioactive, colorless, odorless, tasteless noble gas. Radon is a chemical element with symbol Rn and atomic number 86. Today, these former applications are no longer in vogue because radium's toxicity has since become known, and less dangerous isotopes are used instead in radioluminescent devices. Currently, other than its use in nuclear medicine, radium has no commercial applications formerly, it was used as a radioactive source for radioluminescent devices and also in radioactive quackery for its supposed curative powers. Radium is not necessary for living organisms, and adverse health effects are likely when it is incorporated into biochemical processes because of its radioactivity and chemical reactivity. In nature, radium is found in uranium and (to a lesser extent) thorium ores in trace amounts as small as a seventh of a gram per ton of uraninite. Radium was isolated in its metallic state by Marie Curie and André-Louis Debierne through the electrolysis of radium chloride in 1911. They extracted the radium compound from uraninite and published the discovery at the French Academy of Sciences five days later. Radium, in the form of radium chloride, was discovered by Marie and Pierre Curie in 1898. When radium decays, ionizing radiation is a product, which can excite fluorescent chemicals and cause radioluminescence. All isotopes of radium are highly radioactive, with the most stable isotope being radium-226, which has a half-life of 1600 years and decays into radon gas (specifically the isotope radon-222). Pure radium is silvery-white, but it readily reacts with nitrogen (rather than oxygen) on exposure to air, forming a black surface layer of radium nitride (Ra3N2). It is the sixth element in group 2 of the periodic table, also known as the alkaline earth metals.
Radium is a chemical element with symbol Ra and atomic number 88.
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