Ithaca Inspects Its Rentals for Everything but Radon
The first time I toured a house in Collegetown, the landlord ran through the checklist every Cornell student learns by the second week of the search: water pressure, window locks, smoke detectors, and whether the basement smells like mildew. Nobody said the word radon. I did not think to ask, and no law in New York required anyone in that hallway to bring it up.
However, just because you will not find it written on a rental agreement or discussed during an average rental tour does not mean that it is not a major health issue. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that radon contributes to roughly 21,000 lung cancer deaths in the United States each year. That makes it the second leading cause of the disease, after smoking, and the leading cause among people who have never smoked. Tompkins County sits in EPA Radon Zone 1, the highest of three risk tiers, and county officials report that between 30% and 50% of local tests come back at or above the federal action level of four picocuries per liter. At that level, EPA puts the lifetime cancer risk at about seven in 1,000 for never-smokers and roughly 62 in 1,000 for smokers, with no symptom to warn anyone.
New York has not caught up: a State Senate bill would require radon testing before home sales, and its sponsor memo concedes the state has none now. Even that bill stops at testing: the only duty on record requires a seller who already knows about radon to disclose it, not fix it. Few renters are told even that much; I did not know it when I signed my own lease. Renters fare worse than buyers, in any case: only four states, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, and Maine, address radon in rental housing. That gap falls hardest on a city like ours: the Census Bureau puts Ithaca's owner-occupancy rate at 29.6%, leaving about seven in ten households renting, many of them students sleeping in basements and ground-floor rooms where the gas accumulates.
The old objection, that testing is slow and fussy, has expired. Continuous digital radon monitors now sell for roughly $150 to $350. A peer-reviewed comparison published in 2023 found that two household-grade Ecosense monitors produced readings in line with research-grade instruments. Hardware that once required a professional now fits on a bookshelf and costs less than a month of Collegetown rent.
Closing this gap needs no new machinery, only an inspection Ithaca already runs. Every rental dwelling must hold a Certificate of Compliance, issued after inspecting structure, egress, plumbing, wiring, and heating. Multiple dwellings renew every three years, smaller rentals every five, and student housing annually. Common Council should add one item: a radon measurement taken in the lowest occupied level, filed with the certificate and handed to tenants before anyone signs a lease. The marginal cost is a sensor and a form for units that test clean. For a unit that does not, the city already has the leverage: no certificate issues until the landlord corrects the problem, and reinspection fees climb the longer that takes.
Local action can only go so far, however. Maine has already run this at the state level: since 2014, Maine landlords have had a legal duty to test rental buildings for radon and disclose the results to tenants in writing. What Maine's statute does not do is pay for the fix once a test comes back high, the piece Ithaca and Albany still need to cover. EPA reports that a properly installed mitigation system can cut indoor radon by as much as 99%, and a federal benefit-cost analysis puts the return on fixing existing homes at $7.38 to $15.27 per dollar spent.
Landlords will likely object that the rental market cannot absorb another mandate, which deserves an answer, not a shrug. A monitor spread across a three-year certificate cycle costs a few dollars a month per building, less than the city's own inspection fee, which runs from $250 to $2,500. Mitigation, essentially a fan that vents soil gas above the roofline, is the real expense, typically costing $1,200 to $2,000, and the state should carry part of it. Assemblymember Donna Lupardo's 2025 bill to license radon measurement and mitigation professionals would build that workforce, but its radon fund is earmarked for licensing and enforcement, not landlord grants; any subsidy would still need a separate appropriation.
The lease season opens again this month. Thousands of students will commit a year of breathing to rooms they have toured for fifteen minutes, in a county the federal government flags as high risk for a carcinogen no one can see or smell. Common Council can close the local gap this year, and Assemblymember Anna Kelles and Senator Lea Webb can carry the state version to Albany. Radon has a cheap sensor, a proven fix, and no organized lobby defending it. All that is missing is a rule that makes someone look.
Image Credit
National Cancer Institute Visuals Online, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
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