Radon Gas: A False Alarm?

"Should Homeowners Consider the Radon Threat a False Alarm?"
Excerpts from an article published by Cassandra C. Moore, formerly on the faculty at Michigan State University, and adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute.

Call 1-800-RADON!" screamed the billboards. "Radon is a health hazard in your home," proclaimed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, which ran TV spots a few years ago showing children playing in a comfortable middle-class living room who, exposed to radon, suddenly turned into skeletons.

The billboards have faded from view and buffeted by protests, the EPA no longer shows the television clip. It continues to maintain, however, that exposure to radon is dangerous, causing up to 14,000 deaths annually from lung cancer - a retreat from the original estimates of 30,000.

Radon scarcely justifies the alarm. It is odorless, colorless, tasteless, a noble gas in the periodic table of elements, the by-product of the decay of uranium. Since uranium is widespread, the gas escapes constantly into the atmosphere. It is moderately soluble, so well water passing through uranium-bearing rocks emits radon upon contact with air.

... but its decay produces a chain of radioactive particles, radon "daughters" or radon "progeny." They in turn decay, releasing alpha particles that can penetrate lung cells, damaging DNA and other cellular components. Humans have the capacity to repair damaged DNA and do so regularly. The agency, however, claims that the ionizing radiation process produces irreversible damage that will lead inexorably to lung cancer.

Is the projection realistic? It is based on 50-year-old studies of uranium miners on the Colorado plateau.

Developed after World War II, when the concern with nuclear weapons propelled a search for uranium, the mines were "dog holes" - dusty, poorly ventilated, thick with smoke. The miners themselves smoked, unknowingly increasing the cancer risk. Data were unreliable. Levels of exposure in particular, were uncertain, given the dearth of measurements in the 1940s and 1950s and the questionable value of those that were made, often by the miners themselves.

Radon, however, remained a concern of homeowners in Western Mountain states until 1984 when Stanley Watras, an engineer, set off alarm bells by walking into a nuclear plant under construction in Pennsylvania. The radon level in his home was 16 times that permitted in the mines in fact, the house had been built over an abandoned mine. Suddenly it appeared that uranium and radon were widespread the gas became a concern not only for miners but for householders nationwide. Anxiety rose and with it the burden imposed on homeowners.

The EPA’s approach fanned the flames. Miners who had inhaled radon showed a high incidence of lung cancer, so it was inferred that radon in the home posed a similar threat, despite much lower concentrations and quite different conditions. A generation later, the EPA is still claiming that "we know more about radon risks than risks from other cancer-causing substances because estimates are based on studies of cancer in humans (underground miners)." The radon specter was casting a longer shadow.

The Indoor Radon Abatement Act, articulates a national goal making indoor air as free of radon as outdoor air, which is sheer nonsense, since the pressure differential between inside and outside means that the interior will always have a higher level. Even the EPA no longer proclaims that as an objective.

Unable to regulate nature, the EPA has been moderately successful in frightening the populace [and] it places little emphasis on the costs, even though mitigation of "unsafe levels" nationally, however those levels are defined, could go as high as $1 trillion. It acknowledges that smoking increases the risk of radon exposure but ignores the obvious remedy, an antismoking campaign.

It is estimated that reducing lung-cancer fatalities from radon in drinking water from 192 to 107 per year, by aeration of well water, would cost $272 million annually, or $3.2 million for each of the 85 fatalities avoided. Protesting water utilites claimed that the figure would be five to 10 times higher.

In general, however, the public has been apathetic. Frustrated by its failure to rouse concern, the EPA has buttressed its position by ignoring those studies which fail to support it’s view. Researchers focused on 2,500 residents of Finland who had lived in the same houses - having low to high indoor radon levels - for 20 years they took care to adjust for smoking. The conclusion? "Our results do not indicate increased risk of lung cancer from indoor radon." The study implies that indoor radon exposure does not appear to be an important cause of lung cancer.

The EPA ignores as well the work of University of Pittsburg professor Bernard Cohen, whose research has documented the inverse relationship between radon and rates of lung cancer. A model of clarity and rigor, he has grouped and calculated the data in more than 100 ways, adjusting for every conceivable variable. Still the results hold: As, as the radon level in the home increases, the incidence of lung cancer falls!

The research sounds the death knell of the EPA’s theories, while opening the door to the theory of hormesis - the concept that low levels of ionizing radiation may actually be good for you. The EPA has greeted Cohen’s findings with a deafening silence. And should we be surprised? If his conclusions are correct, the EPA has bought into the radon scare and paid for it with our tax dollars and peace of mind.