Word: radon
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Federal officials warn homeowners that the radon threat is worse than was previously thought, and urge immediate testing...
...environmental-safety manager for the Illinois department of nuclear safety, suggested that the EPA had acted rashly. Like the uranium-rich rock formation stretching across Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York called the Reading Prong, he contended, geological deposits in Wisconsin and elsewhere in the Midwest cause pockets of radon with high readings in very small areas, and these misleadingly boost a state's average. Said Cooper: "It's not imperative that people go out and monitor their homes right now, and the EPA should have made that clear...
Cooper also questioned the estimate of as many as 20,000 lung-cancer deaths a year. "You could say zero to 20,000 and be more accurate," he said. "Their numbers are shaky." Indiana's radon-program coordinator, David Nauth, agreed. "They make these comparisons with cigarette smoking and chest X rays," he said, "and people don't understand that they're talking about prolonged annual exposure at high rates." In fact, the EPA itself concedes that if 100 people spent 75% of their time for 70 years in homes with a reading of 4 picocuries of radon, no more...
There was plenty of other fuel for worry: reports of inexplicable fish kills, warnings against eating shellfish, tales of lakes and forests dying from acid rain. Who could forget that up to 12% of all U.S. houses suffer unsafe radon exposure? That by sending up chlorofluorocarbons used in coolants, man is still destroying the ozone layer that protects against ultraviolet rays...
Surveying 11,600 houses in ten states from Wyoming to Alabama, EPA investigators found that 21% had radon levels exceeding EPA health standards. The American Medical Association promptly declared radon a "risk of substantial magnitude" but described as "somewhat uncertain" federal estimates that attribute 10% of lung-cancer deaths...