Alberta Radon Map: Every Home Health Canada Tested, and What It Read

1,231 homes across Alberta were long-term tested for radon in the two federal surveys. Every one is a dot on this map, coloured by what it read, with the number of tested homes printed beside every district figure.

The Map

Every dot is one tested house. Zoom in for street names. Shaded districts had no home tested in either survey.

under 100100 to 147148 to 199200 and aboveno homes tested

1,231 measurements shown, and 27 more with no district recorded that cannot be placed. Dot positions inside a district are illustrative, not addresses. The survey records which district a home was in, never where it stood. Tap any dot for its reading, or any district for its count and median. Rural districts here cover thousands of square kilometres, so a dot in one says very little about any particular corner of it.

Built from Health Canada's published measurements under the Open Government Licence. We do not sell radon testing or mitigation.

What the Numbers Say

of tested Alberta homes at or above Canada's 200 Bq/m³ action level

median reading, Bq/m³

1,391

highest single reading, in T0G

Outside the two big cities Alberta reads lower, not higher. Of the 1,007 measurements from the rest of the province, 7.3% are at or above the action level with a median of 76, against Calgary at 14.4% and a median of 101, and Edmonton at 6.7%. So the value of this page is not that rural Alberta is worse. It is that until now there was nowhere to look most of it up at all. The highest rural district with a real sample is T0M, the Didsbury and Olds area, at a median of 124 across 18 homes.

The Number Changes Depending on Whose Limit You Use

Canada acts at 200 Bq/m³. The United States EPA acts at about 148. The World Health Organization sets a reference level of 100. Applied to the same 1,231 homes:

at or above Canada's 200

19%

at or above the US EPA's 148

38%

at or above the WHO's 100

Same houses, same measurements. Why the three numbers differ, and which one to use.

By Postal District, with the Sample Sizes Shown

Read the count column before the median column. A district resting on four houses is a hint, not a verdict, and those rows are greyed. The land area column matters too: a district covering ten thousand square kilometres is an average across a region, not a neighbourhood.

District	Land km²	Homes tested	Median	Highest	At or over 200
T0M	21,253	18	124	570	5
T4V	158	15	118	246	2
T0G	61,454	46	99	1391	7
T9N	285	10	97	193	0
T0J	37,637	55	91	719	4
T1H	39	14	89	129	0
T9V	187	10	85	192	0
T0A	36,759	49	80	247	3
T0B	30,127	59	80	581	2
T0H	222,929	169	77	386	9
T0K	24,910	61	77	602	10
T0C	18,267	19	76	389	3
T8V	56	28	75	253	2
T1K	274	18	73	212	1
T7E	8,054	19	73	344	4
T9M	481	18	70	193	0
T0L	28,135	37	69	367	3
T0E	31,996	56	65	280	9
T1A	1,585	18	65	156	0
T8W	332	16	63	247	1
T4T	7,240	19	62	161	0
T1B	3,971	23	60	131	0
T9H	23,261	26	50	168	0
T7V	4,516	18	36	826	1
T9K	39	35	33	151	0

25 districts have ten or more tested homes, which is where these figures start to mean something. The table shows those; 88 districts with thinner samples are on the map but not listed here. 41 districts have no measurement at all and are shaded on the map.

What Actually Settles It

Nothing on this page describes your house. Radon varies enormously between homes on the same street, because it depends on how each building sits on and draws air from the ground beneath it. The highest reading here is 1,391 Bq/m³ and it sits in a district whose median is far below it. A long-term test in your own home is the only measurement that tells you anything about your home.

Also: the other city and province maps, and what radon actually is.

Sources and method. Radon measurements: Health Canada, Radon and Thoron Data From Canadian Homes (Calgary and Edmonton CMAs) pooled with the Cross-Canada Survey of Radon Concentrations in Homes 2009-2011, both under the Open Government Licence – Canada. Boundaries: Statistics Canada 2021 cartographic forward sortation area file, same licence. Percentages are calculated from the individual measurements shown, not quoted from a summary. Land areas are from the Statistics Canada boundary file.