Residential Radon Levels Across the Yukon

Radon levels in the 1,455 households tested across the Yukon ranged from 0 to 3,605 Bq/m³ with a geometric mean of approximately 106 Bq/m³.

Among the households tested, 24.74% had radon levels over the Canadian Exposure Guideline of 200 Bq/m³; corresponding to nearly 1 in 4 homes in the Yukon had high radon.

The World Health Organization sets their radon guideline lower at 100 Bq/m³. Within the Yukon, 50.93% of households had radon levels over 100 Bq/m³, meaning approximately 1 in 2 homes in the Yukon had high radon.

Residential Radon Levels by Community

Figure 1: Homes with high radon levels by community, 2016-2019

Note: Radon data was not available for all Yukon communities.

Residential Radon Levels: Whitehorse Neighbourhoods

Figure 2: Homes with high radon by Whitehorse neighbourhood groups, 2016-2019

Note: Neighbourhood groups that cannot be reported due a low number of homes tested are excluded from this figure, as well as neighbourhoods with no test results over that do not have any test results over the Canadian Exposure Guideline of 200 Bq/m³.

Public Building Radon Levels Across the Yukon

The public building data set contains radon data for 349 public buildings across the Yukon between the years 2016-2021. Radon levels in public buildings across the Yukon ranged from 0 to 1,121 Bq/m³ with a geometric mean of 58.24 Bq/m³.

Among all buildings tested, 8.02% of public buildings had radon levels over the Canadian Exposure Guideline; this corresponds to approximately 1 in 13 public buildings.

Within the Yukon, 26.36% of public buildings had radon levels over the World Health Organization guideline of 100 Bq/m³, meaning just over 1 in 4 public buildings in the Yukon had radon levels above the World Health Organization radon guideline.

Only pre-mitigation data was included to estimate the radon risk in public buildings in this report.

Figure 3: Radon levels from public building radon tests across the Yukon, 2016-2021

Note: The dashed line represents the Canadian Exposure Guideline at 200 Bq/m³. Exposure to radon below this threshold is considered low risk by Health Canada.