Re: Radon's linear dependency

[RuthWeiner@AOL.COM]

The proble (and this is NOT a criticism of either the Field or Cohen papers) is that EPA and other regulators and federal agencies use a simplistic linear approach to project cancer risk.  In spite of complications, confounding factors, etc, and even in mixing together external dose and committed dose equivalent, what is done is three steps, only the first of which really considers complexity and uncertainty:


1.  Estimate collective dose in person-rem (this is a complex process).

2.  Multiply by 0.0005 for public exposure, 0.0004 for occupational exposure (from ICRP).

3.  Report the results as "latent cancer fatalities."


In other words, a simple linear proportion.  Isn't this how EPA got those tens of thousands of radon lung cancers?  Check out any DOE or NRC EIS (e.g., the Sandia sitewide EIS, the Draft PFS EIS) and this is what you will find.  For a while, LCF was all that was even reported!



Ruth Weiner, Ph. D.

ruthweiner@aol.com