Radon Testing for Apartment Buildings in Georgia

1. Why apartment buildings get tested

Georgia does not require radon testing on apartment buildings, so the question for most owners is not whether the state will make them test. It is which of the real triggers applies to their property. In practice, four situations drive most apartment radon testing, and several of them arrive on a transaction timeline rather than on the owner's schedule.

The most common trigger is a financing event. A purchase, a refinance, or a new loan can bring radon into the environmental due diligence, and the scope of testing that a loan requires comes from the lender's current guide rather than from a fixed industry rule. If you are buying, selling, or refinancing an apartment community, confirm the radon requirement with your lender early so testing does not become a closing delay. Our companion guides on the HUD multifamily radon requirements and the 2025 Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac changes cover how those rules differ by financing type.

The other three triggers are an acquisition or refinance due-diligence checklist, a prior high reading on the property or a neighboring one, and a tenant inquiry. Each of these is a reason to test on purpose rather than to wait until a result is forced on you. A test you commission yourself, performed to a recognized protocol and documented in a report, is far more useful than one a buyer's consultant hands you mid-transaction.

2. When a tenant inquiry puts you on notice

Radon awareness has grown, and apartment residents do ask about it, sometimes after a home purchase elsewhere, sometimes after a news story. When a resident puts a radon question in writing, an owner is effectively on notice of the concern. Ignoring it is the riskier choice, because the question is now documented and unanswered.

For a property manager, the practical move is to have a standing answer ready before the first inquiry arrives: a short policy that says the owner tests on a defined basis, follows a recognized protocol, and mitigates units that exceed the action level. A manager who can point to that policy handles the conversation calmly instead of improvising.

3. How testing works in an occupied building

The biggest worry owners raise is disruption. The reassuring answer is that radon testing in an occupied apartment building is low-impact by design. Residents are not relocated. A technician places small measurement devices in selected units, the devices sit quietly through the measurement window, and the technician retrieves them for lab analysis. Residents keep living normally throughout.

The standards an owner's testing should follow are the consensus protocols published by ANSI and the American Association of Radon Scientists and Technologists (AARST) for multifamily and large buildings. These are third-party measurement standards, not a single home test kit, and they are what a defensible report references. When you choose a provider, the right question is whether testing is performed to the current ANSI/AARST protocol. You can review the published standards through the AARST standards library.

4. Device placement, duration, and tenant notification

Devices are placed in the lowest occupied level of selected units, away from drafts, exterior doors, and direct airflow, at roughly breathing height. Continuous radon monitors and short-term test kits are both common, and the choice depends on the building and the report the owner needs. Short-term testing runs a minimum measurement period of a few days, followed by analysis and a written report.

During the measurement window, residents are asked to keep closed-house conditions: windows and exterior doors stay closed except for normal entry and exit, and the devices stay where they were placed. This is why tenant notification matters. A clear notice that explains what the device is, that it is harmless, that it should not be moved, and what the closed-house instructions are will produce better data and fewer questions. Coordinating notices through the property manager keeps the message consistent across the building.

5. Which units carry the most risk

Radon enters from the soil, so the units in direct contact with the ground carry the highest risk. That means ground-floor units, units over a slab or a basement, and units near the building's contact points with the earth. These are the cells where a sound testing plan concentrates, because they are where elevated readings most often turn up.

Upper floors are lower risk, but they are not automatically safe. Stairwells, elevator shafts, plumbing chases, and other vertical pathways let soil gas travel upward, and a building can have an elevated unit on a higher floor while a ground-floor unit reads low. That is the reason testing only a fraction of ground-floor units can miss elevated units. A defensible plan samples across the building rather than assuming the ground floor tells the whole story.

6. What mitigation looks like in an occupied building

If units test at or above 4.0 pCi/L, the standard fix is the same approach used in single-family homes, scaled and engineered for a larger structure: sub-slab depressurization. A system draws soil gas from beneath the slab and vents it above the building before it can enter the units, and a fan keeps the soil under the building at slightly negative pressure relative to the interior.

In an occupied building, the work is planned around residents. Suction points and riser routing are chosen to limit disruption and noise, common areas and mechanical rooms are used where possible, and the schedule is staged so a building is not torn up all at once. After installation, the affected units are retested to confirm the level has come down below 4.0 pCi/L. The record then documents the levels found, the system installed, and the post-mitigation result, which is exactly what an owner wants on file. For a fuller technical overview, see our commercial radon testing guide and our overview of multifamily radon testing.

7. Disclosure and liability in Georgia

Georgia does not have a radon disclosure statute aimed at landlords the way some states do, and it does not mandate testing. That absence of a rule is often misread as an absence of risk. The risk does not come from a state mandate. It comes from notice and from what an owner does after a result is known. Once a building has been tested and a unit reads high, leaving it unaddressed is the exposure, not the test itself.

This article is general information for owners and managers, not legal advice. Lease language, local ordinances, and the facts of a given building all matter, and an owner with a specific question about disclosure or liability should take it to counsel rather than to a checklist.

8. How to get started

Getting started is straightforward. Pull together the basics of the property: the number of buildings and units, the foundation types, the number of ground-contact units, and whether a transaction or a lender requirement is driving the timeline. If a loan is involved, confirm the testing scope that loan requires with your lender, because that scope comes from the lender's current guide rather than a fixed rule.

From there, an experienced radon provider can build a sampling plan, coordinate tenant notification with your management team, place and retrieve devices over a short window, and deliver a written report. If any units read high, the same provider can scope mitigation and a retest. Building this into your operating calendar, rather than reacting to a deadline, keeps a high reading from turning into a scramble.

9. Radon risk in metro Atlanta

Because Georgia has no radon testing law, some owners assume radon is not a local concern. The data says otherwise. On the EPA Map of Radon Zones, four metro Atlanta counties, Fulton, Cobb, DeKalb, and Gwinnett, are Zone 1, the highest category, meaning a predicted indoor average at or above 4.0 pCi/L. The region's granite and uranium-bearing bedrock is the driver, and several surrounding north Georgia counties also carry elevated designations.

For an apartment community in metro Atlanta, the combination of genuinely elevated regional radon and a population of ground-contact units means high results are common enough to plan for. Radon is the second leading cause of lung cancer in the United States, which is the reason owners and managers take a few elevated units seriously rather than dismissing them.

10. Frequently asked questions