Word: radon
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...cancer and even in trace amounts it may put the immune, reproductive and developmental systems at risk. "We've gone through a period in which the public has pooh-poohed other potential dangers," says TIME senior editor Charles Alexander. "People have said we've over-reacted to alar and radon and asbestos. This report goes against that trend. It says that dioxin really is dangerous...
...Publication War: burdened by crippling financial planning and ruthless party chairmen, the Crimson crumbled and has been content to print articles about security guards which no one understands. And, just as every Third World nation is trying to build an atomic bomb out of Sterno and radon testers, so too is there a proliferation of pranking on campus. These events are not unrelated...
...hearings that will ultimately lead to the reauthorization, and possible strengthening, of the 1974 Safe Drinking Water Act. But the debate will be long and difficult. Environmental groups such as the N.R.D.C. want stricter enforcement of the existing rules, along with new or tougher standards on contaminants like radioactive radon gas and arsenic. Lined up on the other side are state and local governments and water utilities, which insist they don't have enough money to comply with the law as it is, let alone additional rules. The regulations should be relaxed, they say, not strengthened...
RADIOACTIVE CONTAMINATION: There are no rules about how much is safe, but the N.R.D.C. cites EPA figures showing that about 50 million Americans drink radon-tainted water. The tasteless, odorless gas, which seeps into water naturally from underground rocks in many areas, is a proven cause of both lung and rectal cancer...
...while admitting that some pollutants are indeed present and dangerous, officials protest that there are limits to what they can do. Radon may cause 200 fatal lung and rectal cancers a year. Yet the Association of California Water Agencies estimates that to eliminate it completely from water in that state alone would cost $3.7 billion. Is that a reasonable investment for preventing perhaps a score of deaths? Is $711 million per case of cancer too much to pay for the elimination of pentachlorophenol, a fungicide used in the lumber industry, or $80 billion per case too much...