Nevada youth radon poster contest entries due next week

The Nevada Radon Poster Contest deadline is fast approaching, with entries due by Thursday.

The contest is open to Nevada students ages 9 to 14. Students with the top five posters will win cash prizes, and the top three posters will also be entered in a national contest.

Radon is a radioactive, colorless, odorless and tasteless gas that comes from the ground. It accumulates in homes and can cause lung cancer. This type of lung cancer is preventable, and the only way to know if a home has elevated levels is to test it.

The poster contest is part of the Nevada Radon Education Program and is sponsored by University of Nevada Cooperative Extension, the Nevada Division of Public and Behavioral Health, Kansas State University and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Cooperative Extension has distributed radon test kits since 2008, and of the 14,612 Nevada homes that have been tested, 3,118 were found to have potentially hazardous radon levels. Once detected, there are fairly easy, inexpensive ways to reduce the radon exposure to safe levels.

Posters in this year’s Nevada Radon Poster Contest should convey some of these important messages: 1) What is radon? 2) Where does radon come from? 3) How does radon get into our homes? 4) Radon can cause lung cancer, and 5) Test your home for radon. Posters will be judged on content accuracy, visual communication of the topic, reproducibility and originality. They can be created with crayon, markers, paint, collage, pencil, photographs or computer graphics. There is no fee to enter, but each child is limited to one entry. Entries must be received by Oct. 31 at the Washoe County Office of Cooperative Extension, 4955 Energy Way, Reno, 89502-4105.

For information on the poster contest, call University of Nevada Cooperative Extension, 775-784-4848. For more information on the dangers of radon and the Nevada Radon Education Program, visit www.RadonNV.com or call the Radon Hotline at 1-888-Radon10 (888-723-6610).