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Seeing as how the odorless, colorless, naturally occurring, radioactive, most noble, dense gas is difficult to imagine...substitute Rodan.Residues from the oil and gas industry often contain radium and its daughters. Because radon is a product of uranium, underground uranium mines may have high concentrations of radon. Many uranium miners in the Four Corners region contracted lung cancer and other pathologies as a result of high levels of exposure to radon in the mid-1950s. The increased number of incidences of lung cancer was particularly pronounced among Native American and Mormon miners, because those groups normally have low rates of lung cancer.The danger of radon exposure in dwellings was discovered in 1984 when Stanley Watras, an employee at the Limerick nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania, set off the radiation alarms on his way to work for two weeks while authorities searched for the source of the contamination. They found that the source was high levels of radon about 100,000 Bq/m³ (2,700 pCi/L) in his house's basement, and it was not related to the nuclear plant. The risks associated with living in his house were estimated to be equivalent to smoking 135 packs of cigarettes every day. At standard temperature and pressure, radon is a colorless gas, but when it is cooled below its freezing point of 202 K (−71 °C; −96 °F), it has a brilliant phosphorescence which turns yellow as the temperature is lowered, and becomes orange-red as the air liquefies at temperatures below 93 K (−180.1 °C; −292.3 °F).Radon, along with the noble gases krypton and xenon, is also produced during the operation of nuclear power plants. A small fraction of it leaks out of the fuel, through the cladding, and into the cooling water, from which it is scavenged. It is then routed to a holding tank where it remains for a large number of half-lives. It is finally purged to the open air through a tall stack, which is carefully monitored for radiation level.It has been said that exposure to radon gas mitigates auto-immune diseases such as arthritis.http://www.lenntech.com/Periodic-chart-elements/Rn-en.htmhttp://www.nsc.org/resources/issues/radon/faq.aspx#7http://www.aarst.org/radon_risk.shtml
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