Word: epa
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...years the Environmental Protection Agency has urged Americans to check their homes for radon contamination. Seeping into basements from underlying rocks and soil, the colorless, odorless radioactive gas raises the risk of lung cancer. The EPA maintains that a household level of four picocuries of radiation per liter of air is enough to produce cancer in 13 to 50 of every 1,000 people who breathe it regularly. The agency estimates that at least 8 million homes exceed this level, warranting such measures as sealing foundation cracks...
...growing number of scientists contend that radon's dangers are overstated. They point out that the EPA bases its warnings primarily on studies of lung-cancer rates among uranium miners. Such workers toil for years in subterranean pits where radon concentrations are thousands of times as high as levels in homes. In some studies, it was not clear how much of the cancer was caused by radon, how much by smoking cigarettes and how much by a combination of the two: researchers believe that radon poses a higher risk for smokers...
...draft's release was reportedly delayed at the request of Allan Bromley, President Bush's science adviser, who asked that it be reviewed by another scientific panel and prefaced with a statement that qualifies the conclusions. In an interview with TIME, Bromley made it plain that he believes the EPA's findings of a "positive association" between electromagnetic fields and childhood cancer are "quite incorrect." "There's no scientific basis for that statement at all," says Bromley. "What we're doing is unnecessarily frightening millions of parents...
More study is essential. The bulk of the research being conducted on the health effects of electromagnetic radiation -- at a cost of some $10 million a year -- is paid for by the Department of Energy and the Electric Power Research Institute, neither of which is a disinterested party. The EPA used to conduct its own studies, but funding for its research was cut off by the Reagan Administration. Perhaps the best candidate for new funding would be the National Institutes for Health. The research should examine not only the effects of ELF fields but also those of less-studied radiation...
...controversial EPA study reviews the possible hazards of electromagnetic fields. -- A major report strengthens the link between red meat and colon cancer...