Radon, a radioactive, colourless, odourless, tasteless noble gas present in residential buildings, has been found to contribute to the deaths of patients suffering from lung cancer.

Klaus Schmid of the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and his co-authors say that about 1900 deaths from lung cancer per year in Germany are due to radon within residential buildings.

The authors base their assessment on the results of relevant studies, the recently published S1 guideline of the German Society for Occupational and Environmental Medicine and a current publication from the German Commission on Radiological Protection.