Before 2020, a Canadian office worker spent maybe eight hours a day in a building someone else was responsible for, and the rest at home. That split has changed for millions of people, and almost nobody has thought about what it did to their radon exposure.
Radon dose is concentration multiplied by time. If you now spend an extra thirty or forty hours a week at home — often in a basement office, which is where radon concentrates — then your exposure went up when your commute went away. The house did not change. The number of hours you spend in it did.
The short version. There are two separate questions here and they have different answers. Should your employer pay? — unsettled in Canadian law, but increasingly they will if you ask well, because it is cheap and it sits neatly in a wellness budget. Should you test regardless? — yes, if you work from home most of the week. A long-term test costs less than a tank of gas and tells you what you are actually breathing in the building you spend most of your life in.
Why working from home changes the calculation
Two things compound.
More hours in the same air. Radon risk accumulates with exposure over time. Someone who moved from five days in an office to three days at home has meaningfully increased the share of their life spent breathing whatever is in their own house.
Home offices are often in the wrong room. The spare room in the basement is the obvious place to put a desk — it is quiet, it is out of the way, and nobody else needs it. It is also the part of the house where radon is highest, because radon enters from the ground and concentrates at the lowest occupied level.
There is a third thing worth naming. Canadian research published in Scientific Reports found that the occupations with the largest numbers of radon-exposed workers are administrative assistants, general office support workers, receptionists, and elementary and kindergarten teachers — office work, not mining. Office workers were already the most exposed group by number when they were in offices. A large share of them now do that work somewhere nobody has ever measured. More on that: 603,000 Canadian workers are exposed to radon.
Question 1: should your employer pay for it?
The honest legal answer
In Canada, how far an employer's occupational health and safety obligations reach into an employee's home is genuinely unsettled, and it varies by jurisdiction. In practice, employer duties for home-based work have mostly been applied to ergonomics and equipment — chairs, desks, monitors — rather than to indoor air quality.
There is a further wrinkle that cuts against the idea of an obligation. As the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety notes, provincial and territorial health and safety Acts usually apply to all workplaces except private homes where the work is done by the owner or occupant. If you own or rent the home you work in, there is a reasonable argument that the statute does not reach it at all.
So we are not going to tell you your employer is legally required to test your home. Anyone who tells you that with confidence is guessing, and if you repeat it to your employer as a legal claim you will get a defensive answer from someone in legal rather than a yes from someone in HR.
The practical answer, which is more useful
The question that actually gets a result is not are you required to? It is would you? And increasingly the answer is yes, for reasons that have nothing to do with obligation:
- Most organisations that moved to hybrid work already fund home-office equipment. A radon test is a fraction of the cost of the chair they bought you.
- It is a one-time cost per household, not a recurring benefit. Finance departments like that shape.
- It covers everyone in the home, not just the employee.
- It produces a measurable result, which most wellness spending does not.
- The new federal workplace radon limit taking effect 30 January 2027 has put the subject on a lot of employers' desks already. You may be pushing on a door that is opening.
How to ask — and what not to do
Ask the right person. This is usually HR, the benefits or total-rewards owner, or whoever administers the home-office allowance. If your workplace has a health and safety committee or representative, they are also a legitimate route and may carry more weight than an individual request.
Ask for the right thing. There are three versions, in increasing order of ambition:
- Reimbursement for one kit under an existing home-office or wellness allowance. The smallest possible ask and often already permitted under a policy that exists.
- A kit for anyone who wants one — a voluntary programme rather than an individual exception. Easier for an employer to say yes to than a one-off, because it does not create a precedent problem.
- A funded programme for the whole team, ordered in bulk. Costs less per head and produces a participation figure the organisation can report.
If you are making the third ask, send them how employer-funded radon testing works. It is written for the person on the other side of your request — how a bulk programme runs, how the privacy side is handled so they never see individual results, why it sits in a wellness budget, and what it does not replace. It will answer most of what they are about to ask you.
Do not frame it as a legal demand. It is the fastest way to have the question routed to someone whose job is to say no. Frame it as a wellness benefit, because that is what it is and that is the budget it will come from.
A note for people who also go into an office
If you are hybrid, there is a second and completely separate question: has the building you go into been tested? That one is not unsettled. If your employer is federally regulated, a new exposure limit applies from 30 January 2027, and there is a defined route for raising it through a health and safety committee — with a written response required within a set period.
Radon at work: a guide for workers and health and safety committees covers exactly that — how to ask, the wording to use, what a compliant test actually looks like so you can tell whether the answer you get is a real one, and what to do if the question is ignored. There is a printable version you can hand to your committee or circulate at a meeting, linked from that page. It is free to reproduce.
The two asks are different and it is usually better to keep them separate. The office question is about an obligation. The home question is about a benefit.
An email you can adapt
Short, specific, easy to say yes to. Adjust to fit how your organisation talks.
Hi [name],
I work from home [three days a week / full time], and my desk is [in the basement / on the lower level]. I have been reading about radon — it is a naturally occurring gas that comes up from the ground and collects in the lowest levels of a building, and Health Canada identifies it as the second leading cause of lung cancer in Canada.
Because I am now spending a lot more hours at home than I used to, I would like to test. A long-term test kit is inexpensive and it is a one-time cost — the detector sits in place for about three months and then goes to a lab.
As an example of what this involves: RadonTest.ca is a Canadian supplier that ships a kit with a prepaid return envelope, uses a C-NRPP-listed detector analysed by a C-NRPP-certified Canadian laboratory (which is what Health Canada advises people to look for), and emails the result with an explanation of what the number means. Current pricing is on their site. There is no appointment and nobody needs to come to the house.
Two questions:
1. Would this be covered under the home-office allowance, or the wellness benefit?
2. Is this something the organisation would consider offering more widely? I understand some employers are now doing this for staff who work from home, and it can be ordered in bulk. Results go to the individual employee rather than to the employer, so there is no privacy issue.
Happy to send along what I have found if that is useful.
Thanks,
[you]
Two things that email does deliberately. It names the budget rather than leaving the reader to work out where the money comes from. And it answers the privacy objection before it is raised, because that is the first thing an HR person will think of.
Question 2: what if they say no?
Test anyway.
Not because your employer was wrong — they may have a policy reason, a budget cycle, or a hundred other requests ahead of yours. Test anyway because the reasoning that made it worth asking for does not stop applying when someone declines to pay for it.
You spend more hours in your home than anywhere else. A long-term radon test costs about what a family takeaway costs. It is a one-time expense rather than a recurring one, and if the number comes back low you do not need to think about it again until something about the building changes.
And if it comes back high, you have found something worth finding, at a point where fixing it is a routine job rather than a crisis. Health Canada recommends mitigating within one year where a home is above 200 Bq/m³, and taking action sooner the higher the level — and mitigation typically reduces levels by more than 80%.
How to do it properly
- Use a long-term test — a minimum of three months, ideally during the heating season when windows are closed and the house is behaving as it does for most of the year. Short-term tests are not appropriate for deciding whether to act.
- Put it where you actually spend time, at the lowest occupied level. If your desk is in the basement, that is where the detector goes. Testing a spare bedroom upstairs tells you about the spare bedroom.
- Use a C-NRPP-listed detector analysed by a C-NRPP-certified laboratory — that is what Health Canada advises people to look for, and it is the only certification that applies to a test kit.
- Leave it alone. Do not move it, do not open windows around it to “get a better reading”. You want to know what the air is like when you are living normally in the house.
Detail: where to place a radon test kit and short-term versus long-term testing. Our long-term test kits are the kind described here — alpha-track detector, prepaid return, laboratory analysis included.
If you rent
You can test the home you live in. Whether you need to tell the landlord first, and what their obligations are if the result is high, depends on the province — see radon for renters.
If you want to get on with it
We supply long-term radon test kits across Canada — C-NRPP-listed detectors, analysed by a C-NRPP-certified, ISO 17025-accredited laboratory, with a prepaid return mailer and results delivered with Health Canada's guidance on what the number means.
If you are asking your employer and they want to talk to a supplier before committing, point them at how employer-funded radon testing works, or have them email support@radontest.ca. We can quote a single kit, a voluntary programme where employees opt in, or a bulk order for a whole team — and we will say plainly which makes sense for the size of group involved.
If you are buying it yourself, that is the same kit and the same laboratory. RadonTest.ca may be able to help either way — and if you just want to understand the subject first, everything on this site is free and we would rather you were informed than quick.
We do not perform mitigation work and we have no financial interest in what your result says.
Common questions
Is my employer legally required to test my home office for radon?
How far occupational health and safety duties extend into a home office is unsettled in Canada and varies by jurisdiction. In practice those duties have mostly been applied to ergonomics and equipment. Treat it as a benefit question rather than a legal one — you will get a better answer, faster.
Does working from home really increase my radon exposure?
Radon dose is concentration multiplied by time. More hours in the same building means more exposure at the same concentration — and home offices are frequently on the lowest level, where radon is highest.
How much does a radon test cost?
A long-term test kit is inexpensive relative to what it tells you, and it is a one-time cost per household rather than a recurring one. Prices vary by supplier and by whether analysis is included.
How long does it take?
A minimum of three months for a long-term test, ideally during the heating season. Realistically: start in autumn, result in spring.
What if my result is high?
Health Canada recommends mitigating within one year where a home is above 200 Bq/m³, and acting sooner the higher the level. Mitigation is usually a one-day job by a certified professional and typically reduces levels by more than 80%. See what to do if your result is above 200.
Should I use a digital monitor instead?
A continuous monitor is useful for seeing how levels move over time, but a long-term alpha-track test analysed by a laboratory is the method Health Canada specifies for deciding whether to act. See long-term test versus digital monitor.
Read next
Radon testing as an employee benefit · 603,000 Canadian workers are exposed to radon · A guide for workers and health and safety committees · Radon in Canadian basements
RadonTest.ca provides testing logistics and laboratory submission. We do not perform radon mitigation and we do not interpret health risk — Health Canada is the health authority on radon in Canada. This page describes publicly available guidance and a commercial service; it is not legal, employment or health advice.
Sources
Brobbey A, Rydz E, Fenton S, Demers PA, Ge CB, Peters CE. “Characterizing occupational radon exposure greater than 100 Bq/m³ in a highly exposed country.” Scientific Reports 2022;12:21323.
Health Canada, Guide for radon measurements in homes; Health Canada, Canadian radon guideline; Health Canada, Radon — Reduction Guide for Canadians; C-NRPP; International Agency for Research on Cancer, Monograph Vol. 100D.