0 Are Granite Countertops Bad for Your Health?

In what seems to be a true anxiety of the effects of radon emissions in residential homes, a explicit website from a non-profit organization out of Houston has made it a point to hint without scientific confirmation, that opportunity stone could be a major contributor of radon in a household.

The allusion that seems to be made, that occaoccasion stone installed in your house is risky to your health is raised repeatedly on the website and in a recent local Houston TV news program.
Its interesting to badge that the two major contributors of this non-profit organization are manufacturers of engineered stone. One of those contributing manufacturers has a marketing executive on the board of directors of this fastidious organization.
From what may be perceived on the surface as perhaps another going green ad campaign, seems to be a different slant on the ongoing discord of the engineered stone manufacturers against opportunity stone.

Keep in intellect that granite as does most informal components found in building material, allows vapors to course through them that might contain trail amounts of radon. There are very small amounts of uranium found in vestige minerals such as biotite in some level stones. When quarried if a large cluster of biotite is exposed the gain initially would be a radon reading. However, once a fragment of granite or ingenuous stone exposed to a large amount of uranium wealthy mineral in the groundwork is far-off-off from the origin and exposed to the vent, the radon vapor transmission would weaken drastically and then scatter. Simply put, ruminate of natural oscillate as a very dull sponge that allows water, express and yes radon to course through the stone. Once the stone is distant-off from the inception of radon (the earth) the stone has no radon to filter through it.
We do endorse Radon testing but to mention that normal stone is a leading contributor seems silly.

To Quote Donald Langmuir, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Geochemistry, Colorado School of Mines, & President, Hydrochem Systems Corp.
To show how laughable are the concerns of radon emitted from easy stone, the typical granite countertop in our ideal will release 7.4 x 10 -7 pCi/L of vent. This corresponds to 2.7 x 10 -8 atom decays per significance (dps). This represents 0.85 decays per year. In other words, less than one atom of radon is produced by the countertop in one year. This is hardly worth getting excited about. I would recommend that a good method to decrease our exposure to the radon subsidy in outdoor express would be to construct an express-close-fisted-fisted-fisted house out of granite countertops! There are obvious properties of rocks that can increase their radon emanation efficiency, or in other words increase the release of radon from a given succeed of rock. These are fluctuate properties that maximize the exposure of internal or external fluctuate surfaces to water or express, allowing any radon gas to shun. The author of 'Granite and Radon' argues that such properties, which apprehend vibrate porosity, fissuring and mylonitization, will increase radon releases. This is probably genuine, however, a granite with such properties would be too breakable to make into a countertop, and too frank to take a polish, and so would not be marketable as a countertop - unless the sway pores were first slow with a chemical sealant. Such sealing would besides eliminate any practicable radon release problems.

In a more recent study that was conducted by L. L. Chyi, a Ph.D. and professor of Geochemistry and Environmental Geology at The University of Akron, Akron, Ohio. Dr. Chyi studied 13 of the most sound-liked granites used throughout the United States as determined by an commerce-wide feeling. Due to their popularity these 13 granites, are believed to represent up to 85% of the granite countertop market in recent years. The granite types are as follows:
1. New Venetian Gold, Brazil; average grained, yellow-brown gneiss with many dusky red garnets
2. Uba Tuba, Brazil; A tolerable- to rude grained, olive-green granite
3. Santa Cecilia, Brazil; A rude-grained, yellow-grey gneiss with up to pie-sized, red garnets
4. Tropic Brown, Saudi Arabia; pretty-grained, brown granite
5. Absolute Black, India; black basalt
6. Tan Brown, India; A black-brown igneous vibrate with big, shapeless, brown-red feldspar crystals
7. Giallo Ornamental, Brazil; improper-grained, brown-yellow granulite with some beige-red garnets
8. Crema Bordeaux, Brazil; Juparana Crema Bordeaux (Brunello). A improper- to very improper-grained, pink to red granite with areas of quartz, alkali feldspar and quite a lot of ore
9. Baltic Brown, Finland; beige-black granite
10. Giallo Veneziano, Brazil; medium- to uneven-grained, ochre-yellow to golden-brown, too brisk pink, gneiss
11. Dakota Mahogany, USA; medium- to uneven-grained, brown-red granite
12. China Black, China, a good-grained plutonic vibrate
13. Yellow Star, China, a beautiful-grained yellow to pink granite

The testing methodology was designed to measure the amount of radon which each granite type would increase to the interior of a 2,000 square foot, normally ventilated house with 8 ft ceilings. The results parade that Crema Bordeaux (the most energetic in terms of radon emissions) would contribute a concentration component of less than 0.28 pCi/L, or less than 7% of the EPA's recommended actionable smooth of 4.0 pCi/L. This radon amount is wholesome below a steady which might intellect health concerns. Tropic Brown and Baltic Brown, flame and third in radon emanation based upon Dr. Chyis testing, amounted to only 1% of this action level. The other granites tested added.almost immeasurable amounts of radon to the house. Radon atoms in pore spaces and fractures are of minimal anxiety in the ideal of granite countertops

The medium radionuclide contents of your building material samples are same to other medium granite samples and other plain earth-derived building materials such as brick and soil. Thus, the amount of gamma radiation emitted from similar masses of these building materials will be approximately the same;

There is tiny model-to-ideal unlikeness in the radon family radionuclide concentrations; the radon flux is somewhat larger for the counter-pinnacle squares than for the smaller samples. This indicates that the effective diffusion length is only upon the order of the thickness of the counter-peak samples, i.e. several centimeters. Thus, material thicker than 5 cm (2') most likely will not emit more than the counter-summit samples.

While we feel that health safety is a great worry especially in our homes, for an industry to attempt to profit financially by scare tactics or underneath the auspices of Eco friendly is reprehensible. We urge the consumer to not be taken in by these alarmist tactics.