RADON IN THE WILDERNESS

Radon, as we reported earlier, is a radioactive gas formed in homes by the natural decay chains of uranium, itself present in building materials, the ground, and the water piped into the home. Its daughters are solid, lodge in the lung, and have been identified as a source of lung cancer (1% of all lung cancers according to a British government study). The concentration of radon is rapidly increased by energy conservation measures involving insulation unless ventilation via expensive heat exchangers is undertaken. [AtE Jun 80; H. Hurwitz, The Indoor Radiological Problem, GE Report 81 CRD025, Schenectady, N.Y., Feb. 81, and literature cited there.]

Measurement of doses due to radon in homes requires special methods. A very successful, sensitive, and comparatively cheap detector has been developed by Terradex Corporation, which markets it under the name of Track Etch. The tracks left by alpha particles as they penetrate a special plastic are made visible by etching and counted under a microscope; the dose is proportional to the number of tracks per unit area.

Track Etch will measure the total alpha exposure to radon and its alpha-emitting daughters (or by a simple modification, of radon only), and Terradex has made extensive, worldwide measurements of radon concentrations. A recent study involved almost 26,000 track detectors in US, Canadian and Swedish homes, and below we have tabulated some of the results to make our editorial charge against Ralph Nader stick. His Health Research Group, Inc., petitioned OSHA that the exposure to radon of uranium miners be limited to a maximum of 0.7 WLM/yr (units used in the mining industry) corresponding to 7 picocuries per liter (pCi/l; write for Energy Data Sheet, p.4, listing units of radioactivity). That level is noted as the "Ralph level" below; you might call it the level of Nader's heartrending concern for public and occupational health.

A later report, given by Terradex president H.W. Alter at the Internl. Symposium on Indoor Air Pollution at the U. of Mass., Oct. 13-16, is available to AtE readers from Mr. Alter at Terradex Corporation, 460 N. Wiget Lane, Walnut Creek, CA 94598.

Nader's "health" group is not, of course, the only one a brush the health hazards of energy conservation under the carpet. The July 1980 issue of the National Wildlife Federation, Wildlife Digest, bristles with exhortations to energy conservation, and contains an article on the deadly dangers of radon from uranium tailings - both he kind of subjects that the National Wildlife Federation is naturally all about. (Terradex measured the radon concentration at a uranium mining and milling complex for one year: 4 pCi/l on site, and 1 pCi/l at a distance of 1 mile; which is probably less than at NWF headquarters.) Along with a drawing showing radon diffusing into the air from a tailing pile, one Susan M. O'Connell describes the horrors of radon: cleaning up 22 abandoned disposal sites, she says, would avoid some 339 cancer cases over the next 100 years. What Susan does not tell her readers is that the indoor radon from energy conservation by insulation of buildings as promoted by the Carter administration would cause at least 10,000 additional fatal cancers in every single year [B. L. Cohen, "Health effects of radon from insulation of buildings, Health Physics, Dec. 1980, pp.937-941. But if the Terradex indoor samples are accepted as representative for all of the US, then the number of conservation-induced cancer deaths in every single year is 32,400.]