Re: Radon - recent articles supporting risk at residential exposures

[RuthWeiner@AOL.COM]

Not one of these abstracts provides the following straightforward details:


A comparison of a population that has, say, 20-year continuous high radon exposure of every member of the population with a population that has 20-year continuous low radon exposure of every member of the population, and a comparison of the lung cancer rates of the two populations.  neither population should include miners.  The two populations should be matched for smoking habits, secondary smoke exposure, general air pollution exposure (though I don't think air pollutants cause cancer), age range, range of dietary habits, general environmental exposure.


If both populations contain a significant number of smokers, I would bet you that the correlation of lung cancer with smoking would mask any other correlation.


The following phrase caught my eye in one of the abstracts:

 "...epidemiological studies of individuals exposed to 

densely-ionising radiations such as alpha particles (e.g. radon, 

plutonium workers, individuals exposed to depleted uranium)..." 


Aside from the grammatical confusion, isn't the exposure pathway important?  shouldn't such a study focus on, or at least differentiate, the inhalation pathway (the radon pathway) from other exposure pathways?  Moreover, why single out "depleted uranium" (uranium with less than 0.711% U-235)?  What about enriched uranium (nuclear power plant workers)? natural uranium (everybody)?  What about people exposed to the americium in smoke detectors?





Ruth Weiner, Ph. D.

ruthweiner@aol.com