Protect those breathers

This year, I’ve had several encounters to appreciate lungs. I usually don’t think of their work through the days, but in January, I ended up spending a couple weeks at someone’s bedside in a hospital intensive care unit. Most of the time, the hall was quiet (with the exception of small alerts tweeting from computers reading vitals, pumps running and an occasional overhead code). One night, a tremor of trauma teams rippled through as they prepped a room two doors down to receive someone who had just been shot through by nine bullets and was coming out of the operating room. At first, family members sloughed by to pay last respects; it then tapered. Two weeks later, I met the victim’s mom on a upper floor for patients awaiting transition to physical rehab or home. I was astonished as she recounted how a lung was the only organ lacerated by a slug. It took heroic efforts to keep it working, but he survived and was close to discharge.

During that same time, I was intermittently handling technical assistance manners for Alaskans who had requested radon test kits during a giveaway promo during this year’s National Radon Action Month (through January). With radon, though minuscule alpha radiation particles bombard the surface lung tissue when breathes take in air containing radon gas, each hit is undetectable. Unlike the drastic situation of lung trauma from a bullet, the damage to your lungs from radon ends up as cancer; radon is the second leading cause of lung cancer, behind only smoking. Often, by the time it is detected by X-ray or CT scans from years and years of breathing in radon, survival isn’t possible.

In February, I had to have a couple lung X-rays taken myself. The order was not related to cancer; rather, they were taken at a clinic to make sure there wasn’t fluid in my lungs. After a week of respiratory distress, this wasn’t unusual, as word of coronavirus and its resulting complication of pneumonia had been top of the news the past several days. Thankfully, both lungs were clear. Aside from the amazing encounter of the victim’s recovery from the lung laceration and working with radon, the experience of trying to breath through strain certainly has put the importance of healthy lungs right in front of me since the first of the year.

We can’t dodge bullets nor often avoid illnesses, yet one thing we can do is become aware of the presence of radioactive radon by testing. While the University of Alaska Fairbanks Cooperative Extension Services no longer conducts radon test kit sales, the non-profit partner which knows lungs best– the American Lung Association of Alaska — does have radon test kits available (as do various building supply and hardware stores at their brick-and-mortar or online locations). Remember, the only way you will know if you have a radon concentration in the indoor air of your home is to test.

Art Nash is an associate energy professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and serves as chair of Alaska’s National Extension Healthy Home Partnership Advisory Board.

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