Commercial Radon Disclosure and Landlord Liability in Georgia

1. No state mandate, no radon-disclosure statute

Start with what Georgia does not do. The state has no law that requires commercial landlords to test buildings for radon, and it has no radon-specific disclosure statute that spells out what an owner must tell a tenant about radon. Some states have built radon obligations into their landlord-tenant or real estate laws. Georgia has not.

For many owners, that is where the analysis stops, and it is the wrong place to stop. The lack of a specific statute tells you there is no checkbox the state forces you to tick. It does not tell you that you are free of every other source of responsibility. Those other sources, which are general rather than radon-specific, are exactly what this article is about, and they are why the rest of this discussion keeps pointing you back to your attorney.

2. Why no mandate does not mean no liability

Liability for a property condition does not always flow from a condition-specific statute. As a general matter, property owners can owe a duty to keep premises reasonably safe for the people who use them. That kind of duty is not unique to radon, and it does not disappear simply because the legislature never passed a radon law. How that general duty applies to radon in your building is a legal question, and it is one your attorney should answer for your facts.

The practical point for landlords and property managers is to stop treating the missing statute as a shield. The more useful question is not "Am I required to test?" but "If a radon problem later surfaced, would my conduct look reasonable?" That reframing tends to lead to better decisions, and it is a question you can work through with counsel.

3. What it means to be on notice

A recurring theme in premises questions is notice. Broadly speaking, what a property owner knew or had reason to know can matter a great deal. The clearest example for radon is a written inquiry. When a tenant, an employee, or a prospective tenant puts a radon question to you in an email or a letter, you have a record that the subject was raised. From that point forward, "we never thought about it" is no longer an accurate description of where you stand.

Being on notice does not by itself decide liability, and we are not telling you what the law requires of you in that moment. What it does, in a practical sense, is shift the question from whether you knew to what you did once you knew. That is why a documented, reasonable response to an inquiry is generally a stronger position than silence. Ask your attorney how notice is likely to be treated in your circumstances before you decide how to respond.

4. Documenting a test and any mitigation

Once you are on notice, the most defensible thing a landlord can usually do is generate a clear record. That starts with a radon test performed to current ANSI/AARST protocols, the consensus standards published by the American Association of Radon Scientists and Technologists, rather than a generic home kit. A protocol test produces a written report you can keep, point to, and rely on later.

If the building reads at or above 4.0 pCi/L, the common practice is to mitigate, typically with a sub-slab depressurization system sized for the structure, then retest to confirm the building reads below 4.0 pCi/L. The point, from a risk standpoint, is the paper trail: the level you found, the system you installed, and the post-mitigation result that confirms it worked. EraseRadon coordinates testing and mitigation to these protocols for commercial properties across metro Atlanta and provides that documentation, though whether and how the record protects you is a legal question for your attorney.

5. Lease and disclosure considerations

Leases are where many of these issues are allocated between landlord and tenant in practice. At a general level, commercial owners often work with counsel on how a lease addresses environmental conditions, access for testing, responsibility for any remediation, and how an elevated result would be handled if one ever came up. There is no universal radon clause, and the wording that actually protects a given owner depends on the property, the use of the space, and how Georgia law reads on the specific facts.

On disclosure, remember that Georgia has no radon-specific disclosure statute, so there is no statutory script to follow. That does not settle whether a prior elevated result should be shared with a new tenant, because disclosure questions can still arise under general principles and under the lease you sign. We do not draft lease language and we are not attorneys. Decisions about lease clauses and about what to disclose belong with your attorney, who can weigh your documentation and any mitigation you have performed.

6. A practical risk-management approach

Stripped of the legal nuance, a sensible posture for many commercial landlords looks like this. Treat a written radon inquiry as the moment you are on notice. Respond in a documented way rather than letting it sit. Arrange a protocol test, keep the report, and if the building reads at or above 4.0 pCi/L, mitigate and retest to confirm the level dropped. Keep all of it on file. None of those steps is something Georgia forces you to do, and none of them is a substitute for legal advice, but together they describe an owner who took a known concern seriously.

The opposite posture, treating the absence of a state mandate as a reason to do nothing after a tenant raises radon in writing, is the pattern that tends to look worst in hindsight. Reasonable action that you can document is generally easier to defend than inaction in the face of a known question. How much action is "reasonable" for your building is, again, a determination for your attorney.

7. Why metro Atlanta landlords should pay attention

The no-mandate framing is especially risky in metro Atlanta because the underlying radon risk here is genuinely elevated. On the EPA Map of Radon Zones, several metro Atlanta counties, including Fulton, Cobb, DeKalb, and Gwinnett, fall into Zone 1, the highest predicted-average category. The region's granite and uranium-bearing bedrock drives those designations, and surrounding north Georgia counties carry elevated designations too. You can review the zones through the EPA Map of Radon Zones.

The EPA zone map predicts averages by county. It does not tell you whether a specific building is elevated, and EPA advises testing no matter which zone you are in. For a commercial landlord, the combination matters: the state imposes no testing requirement, yet the local geology makes elevated buildings common. That is precisely the setting where being on notice and choosing to do nothing is hardest to defend later.

8. When to bring in your attorney

Everything in this article is general information about how landlords commonly think about radon when no specific statute applies. It is not legal advice, and it cannot account for your lease, your tenants, your building, or how a Georgia court would view your particular facts. Those are the questions that decide actual liability, and they belong with a licensed attorney.

Bring in your attorney before you respond in writing to a radon inquiry, before you add or rely on radon language in a lease, and before you decide whether to disclose a prior result. EraseRadon's role is the technical one: testing to ANSI/AARST protocols, mitigation when a building reads high, and the documentation that goes with both. We coordinate that work for commercial owners across metro Atlanta, and we leave the legal calls to your counsel.

9. Frequently asked questions