Colleagues:

I am pleased to share with you the results of a modest exploration the American Lung Association has made concerning some of the impacts of Montgomery County, Maryland’s radon testing law pertaining to sales of single-family homes.

That law was passed in 2015 and went into effect the following year. The case study was developed to respond to concerns some have expressed over the perceived potential for the negative impact of such testing requirements on residential real estate transactions. The work to carry out this project has been underway for a few years, beginning under the tenure of our beloved Janice Nolen, but we have at last been able to create and finalize an educational product we are proud of. We hope it is useful for your professional education purposes.

We are grateful for the participation of many in helping this work come to fruition. Professor Grant Brown of the Department of Biostatistics at the University of Iowa conducted analysis using testing data, provided by cooperating laboratories, that was collected and managed by Eric Brown, Environmental Data Coordinator for the Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment, along with records of certain real estate market metrics for Montgomery County compiled and made available by the Greater Capital Area Association of Realtors®.

Together, these datasets helped us investigate the effects, if any, of the radon law on home sale transactions. We were pleased to conclude that while radon testing appeared to increase significantly, we could find no measurable adverse impacts of the then new radon law on market metrics for home sales.

I include a copy of the document attached.