ON NAKED IMBECILES AND RADON REMEDIES

As explained many times, radon is no direct hazard except as a transporter. The real danger comes from its shortlived, solid and highly active daughters Polonium 218 (halflife 3.05 min), bismuth 214 (19.7 min) and lead 214 (26.8 min). Polonium, like plutonium, is an alpha emitter; the other two emit beta radiation (electrons). When they lodge in the lung, they use their short and highly active life to bombard cells with alpha or beta particles, and this may cause lung cancer.

[Why may? Because more likely the particles will merely kill the cells in their paths. Cancer results when the cell lives on with a damaged genetic code and becomes an agent of disinformation, transmitting false instructions on the building of new cells.]

The EPA estimates between 5% and 15% of all fatal lung can-cers due to this cause. The total in the US is 130,000/year, of which 85% are attributed to cigarette smoking; the upper limit for radon, 15% or 20,000 deaths, would leave no other significant causes of lung cancer.

In this connection let me repeat for the umpteenth time that I have not been writing about radon for years to scare people, but to show up the despicable inconsistency in regulating the same physical phenomenon: the US government recommends remedial action in homes when the radon concentration exceeds 4 pCi/l or, by EPA-determined equivalence, 800 mrem/yr, but the NRC refuses to license designs of nuclear plants that would expose the public to more than 10 mrem/yr, where "the public" means vagrant imbeciles who sit naked on the boundaries of a nuclear plant 24 hours a day, eating food grown on its effluent water.

The chief remedy for high radon concentrations is ventilation (two air changes per hour are considered adequate). And that, in turn, requires cheap energy, for what is lost with the old air is its temperature. Houses made tight for energy conservation have higher radon concentrations, though the increase is not as marked as that corresponding to higher radon intake (by geographic loca-tion). When the EPA ordered remedial action at 594 sites where houses had been built on uranium mill tailings near Grand Junc-tion, Colo., measurements of radon concentrations were taken by the Colo. Dept. of Health before and after removal of the tailings. The work began in 1971 and continued for several years. In about 5% of the cases it was observed that the readings were either un-changed or higher after removal. Although no special study was made of these cases, the obvious explanation is that by the time the tailings were removed, energy prices had skyrocketed, and people conserved energy by insulating their homes, thus compensating or overcompensating for the removed tailings.

St. Amory solved the problem by air-to-air heat exchangers, al-lowing the air, but not the heat, to be expelled from his $500,00 mountain palace, and this is a possibility for all whose home is equally humble. However, there is an alternative method worked out by a group in the Harvard School of Public Health led by Prof. Dade W. Moeller, which makes the radon daughters unavailable for breathing by forcing them to contact the room's surfaces, to which they adhere (plate out). They then decay into other isotopes and cease to be of any consequence. This is done in part by an ordinary fan that simply moves the air around, increasing the chance that a radon daughter will contact a wall; but mainly it is done by an ion generator which generates positive ions. The radon decay products are positively charged also, and the generated ions literally push the radon daughters to the wall (and other surfaces, including floor and ceiling).

Studies made by Prof. Moeller and colleagues show that the combined application of fan and ion generator can remove 75% to 90% of the radon decay products from the inside of buildings. The studies also reveal another surprising point: normal air cleaning methods such as filters and electrostatic precipitators can actually increase the dose delivered to the lung, in some cases as much as doubling it. The reason is that normally the radon daughters attach themselves to dust particles (see NCRP report below) which act as a partial screen when inhaled. If an unattached radon daughter is inhaled, it can deliver up to 40 times the dose per atom.

The device is clearly far less bothersome to install than air-to-air heat exchangers, which require a network of inlet and outlet ducts for each room where they operate.

[More: Just published: Measurement of Radon and Radon Daughters in Air, National Council on Radiation Protection (7910 Woodmont Ave./#800 Bethesda, MD 20814, $18). General references about radon: A Citizen's Guide to Radon, EPA Office of Air and Radiation, August 1986, OPA-86-04 (free but usually in short supply); Bodansky and others: Indoor Radon and its Hazards, U. of Wash. Press (Box 50096, Seattle, Wash. 98145, $9.95). Moeller removal method: E.F. Maher, S.N. Rudnick, D.W. Moeller, "Effective removal of air- borne Rn 222 decay products inside buildings," Health Physics, vol. 53, no. 4 (October 1987), pp.351-356. Commercial product based on the method: "No- Rad" radon removal system, Ion Systems Inc., 2546 10^th st., Berkeley, CA 94710.]