Jack Earley
Radiological Engineer
-----Original Message-----Ruth,
From: AndrewsJP@aol.com [mailto:AndrewsJP@aol.com]
Sent: Wednesday, January 23, 2002 9:38 AM
To: RuthWeiner@aol.com; michaelford@cox-internet.com; healthrad@hotmail.com; radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu
Subject: Re: Lung cancer mortality from radon versus mortality from other <plus> Radon...
I once surveyed a house for radon and politely told everyone that it would be best to go outside. The air sample that I took quickly was so hot that I had to wait more than 2 hours to count 1/4 of the filter to estimate the radon daughter concentration. My meter was off scale on the highest range. Admittedly it was a large NaI(Tl) scintillator. My personal chirper was chirping every 3 minutes or so - and this is what warned me of the problem as I was setting up the air sampler - and its sensitivity is about 100 chirps per mR. So the dose rate was over 1 mR/hr inside the house. It was a new house, built very tight to save energy. There was a new baby and the doors and windows were closed. When I went in, the house had the warm smell of "new baby." Well, we opened some windows and aired out the radon and daughters and the dose rate went away as would be expected. But the bottom line was that this house should be fixed for radon! first and other hazards could wait. This house was such an exception that the radon scare began there in Pottstown. It seems that it is still going...going...going......
John Andrews
Knoxville, Tennessee