Meet Greg, an air quality expert who wants you to test for radon

Working with a robot on the summer graveyard shift in 1983 in the General Motors Oshawa Plastics Plant was enough to convince Greg Baytalan he needed to pursue post-secondary education. “Yes, GM had robots in 1983,” Greg laughs. 

His appreciation for the environment – he especially can’t stand litter and raw sewage dumped in lakes – led him to an environmental health technologist diploma at BCIT. As a summer Public Health Inspector student, Greg worked with the provincial South Okanagan Health Unit in Penticton while the town was experiencing one of the largest Giardia outbreaks in North America. Even Greg caught the bug.

Greg started his career as an environmental health officer (EHO) in 1986 in Fort St. John, and covered a massive area of industrial oil and gas activity. Three years later, Greg moved to Kelowna into a provincial EHO role dominated by land use and sewerage approvals. 

His first foray into air quality management came when he was asked to participate in the Regional District of Central Okanagan air shed management efforts to address problematic outdoor burning. He later joined the provincial working group that ultimately led to the ban of tobacco smoking in bars and restaurants. 

As his interest in air quality grew, he also took on the tobacco sales enforcement program for the Okanagan Similkameen Health Region. In the fall of 2007, after a one-year sewerage secondment at the Ministry of Health, Greg assumed the role of Specialist EHO with a focus on air quality.     

In 2012, Greg had a chance to attend the first-ever Canadian Association of Radon Scientists and Technologists conference in Ottawa. There, Health Canada offered to partner with agencies on radon awareness and reduction efforts. Greg, who applied on behalf of IH, was the only applicant and received a grant in excess of $100,000. 

With the grant money, he launched a project to test radon in daycares, and to screen for radon in IH workspaces. Three years later in 2017, IH’s Environmental Public Health licensing department required radon testing as a condition of child care licenses, the first agency to do so in Canada. 

“This was very good news,” says Greg. “Especially for an area estimated to have 1/3 of homes above the Canadian radon guideline of 200 Becquerels/m³.”    

In the fall of 2022, thanks to some funding leftover from the pandemic, Greg was given the opportunity to help lead radon testing in schools. This led to the Radon in Schools project. “Since testing is best done for 91 days or more in the winter months, we had less than two months to get the program off the ground,” he recalls. 

The project, now into its second year, has seen more than 4,200 detectors sent out to 15 of 17 Southern Interior school districts as well as independent schools.

Today, Greg focuses most of his efforts on radon initiatives, and works closely with IH environmental public health colleagues, medical health officers, BC Lung Foundation, BC Centre for Disease Control and Health Canada. “Every day, I get to do work that has a potential to make a difference,” he says. “The recently launched Radon Skill Testing Contest is a prime example.”

To call Greg passionate about radon testing and mitigation might be an understatement. His own home in Kelowna has a proven DIY radon mitigation system – an installation in his crawlspace that uses a fan and perforated pipe below a polyvinyl barrier to vent radon outside. 

“For years, in public health, the focus has long been on water, food and sewage, in that order,” he says. “With COVID-19 and radon bringing indoor air quality to the forefront, I would add air quality to this list of priorities – and not necessarily at the end.” 

Health Canada places the lifetime risk of getting lung cancer at the Canadian guideline of 200 Becquerels/m³ at one in 50 people, far greater than exposure to other carcinogens that are nationally regulated. Add smoking to the mix and the risk of lung cancer greatly increases. 

“Daily, nine radon-related lung cancer deaths occur in Canada, many in locations with less radon prevalence than the B.C. Interior," shares Greg. "And the only way to know how much radon is in your home, work and indoor leisure spaces is to test.”  

Learn more about radon gas and testing