"80 times the radioactivity of normal average gas is going to expose consumers to 1,200 times the radiation dose they'd get if they lived right next door to an operating nuclear reactor."
Although we've been talking a lot about Marcellus shale in the eastern US, black shales occur all over the world: "If enough organic material is present to exhaust the oxygen in the environment, black shale results."
Not cost-effectively.
How much radon is there? Because radon-222 decays from radium-226, one first assesses concentrations of radium-226 at the wellhead. The industry identifies likely formations of natural gas at the Marcellus Shale through readings of high radioactivity and high carbon. One source calculates wellhead concentrations of radon in Marcellus shale up to 70 times the average of other US natural-gas wells. However, that average was calculated by the EPA in 1973, before the advent of fracking in its current visage. (The report from which this information is derived is dated March 2012.) Now we pursue gas in marine black shale.
As gas is transported decay proceeds. "At 10-mph movement in the pipeline, natural gas containing the radioactive gas, radon, which has a half-life of 3.8 days, will have three times the radon concentrations than natural gas originating at the Gulf Coast, everything else being equal, which it is not." Basically, radon will be removed by its own decay, if you wait long enough.
Radon remaining in the pipeline is delivered to your house from stoves and space heaters. Radon gas mixes within the living space so average concentrations depend on the size of the living space and the number of air interchanges. Some apartments in New York City are not expansive.
Being inert, radon that is inhaled is usually exhaled unless it should happen to decay in the lung. When radon decays, it produces such radioactive-decay products as polonium, bismuth, and lead. "These are solid fine radioactive particles that can be inhaled and subsequently reside in the lung." Decay also makes ions. In living cells, ionization occurs with removal of electrons from atoms, both of which then become charged. Like a raccoon in your living room, an ion can react with other atoms in a cell and damage may ensue. Radiation passing through a cell might cause water molecules near the DNA to become ionized, which might cause the DNA to break. Broken DNA can cause mutations such as cancer. Thus we strive to avoid radon gas.
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