THE GREAT RADIATION COVERUP

Once again we refer to the emissions by radon daughters to which every American is exposed (mainly from building materials, the earth, and water used for drinking and showering), and which are very significantly enhanced by conservation measures involving decreased ventilation. According to Dr Henry Hurwitz Jr of the GE R&D Center in Schenectady, N.Y., reduced ventilation can result in doses in excess of 1,000 mrem/year. (The US and international radiation protection standards recommend 500 mrem/year as the upper limit.)

The standards are, of course, highly conservative, and 1,000 mrem/year is still very little; we report on it not to beat the alarm, but rather to illustrate the disgusting double standard used by those entrusted with protecting our health.

As we reported earlier, the EPA stopped classifying coal ash as radioactive waste, but left uranium tailings in that class, though in toto, they emit 5 times less radiation; and the OTA, in its Residential Energy Conservation report gave the radonenhanced risk of (lung cancer all of 4 lines out of its 355 pages. Since then, the (governmental) Interagency Task Force on Ionizing Radiation downplayed the point by relegating it to an obscure footnote.

On the other hand, the EPA does not downgrade such things to obscurity; it stamps them out into total oblivion. In a little noticed announcement of Dec. 13, 1979, the EPA published the radioactive pollutants it considers hazardous, and which make an interesting list - existing coal plants produce up to 10,000 times more cancers in the surrounding population (per plant, not total!) than nuclear ones, and even new coal plants, with all required pollution controls, produce up to 2,000 times as many (0.2 fatal cancers per year vs. 0.0001). However, the naturally occurring radionuclides in the atmosphere, and the technologically enhanced ones, such as natural gas and weather proofing in buildings (both primarily due to radon daughters) are omitted, though the dose they give the average citizen is far higher than that from any of the sources listed by EPA.

The British National Radiological Protection Board (Annual R&D Report May 1978) estimates that up to 1% of lung cancers are due to radon daughters in building materials; this was based on a survey of three radon daughters (polonium 218, lead 214, and bismuth 214) in homes in British cities.

There is only one known way to prevent uranium decaying into these toxins: Burn it as fuel in nuclear power plants.

Sola dosis venenum fecit (It is only the dose that makes the poison) used to be the scientific, medical, and legal principle, but that now seems to be, as one says in Washingtonese, obsolesscent. The new rule is Sola EPA venenum fecit.