Re: More on Radiation effec

["Jack Kay" <jgkay@coasmail.physics.drexel.edu>]

        Reply to:   RE>>More on Radiation effect
Jim should look at the recent issue of the New England Journal of Medicine
(January, 1994, as I recall) for a report of a Swedish study on the
relationship between indoor radon and lung cancer.  I fail to see what
"political" gain the Swedes have in publishing this work.

When I heard Cohen's presentation several years ago, I understood that he was
addressing the linear no-threshold theory.  There may indeed be a threshold. 
His data were not appropriate for showing that radon (i.e., radon progeny) does
not cause lung cancer.

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Date: 6/11/94 5:40 PM
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From: JMUCKERHEIDE@delphi.com
To: Multiple recipients of list <radsafe@romulus.ehs.uiuc.edu>
Subject: Re: More on Radiation effects
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X-Comment:  Radiation Safety Distribution List 

Wade Patterson writes:

>On a related matter:
>Mary Nichols, Assistant Administrator, EPA said in a
>recent San Francisco speech, "Air pollution, including
>radon and indoor air is still the number one environmental
>health risk across the U.S."
>Evidently, EPA is unaware of the measured relationships
>between radon and lung cancer.

Nichols is telling the truth in that she only really says "air pollution...
is still... number one", and truthful implying that "radon and indoor air"
is a significant contributor, knowing many people are getting seriously sick
in many buildings and schools from indoor air (including EPA Region I having
to abandon its own building in Boston to undertake repairs), but she is
unaware, she has been deliberately misled, in identifying radon as implying
any significant contribution to that kind of impact. 

It is part of the failure of health physics that even under the
"conservative" linear model there could be no remote approach to the risks
of other indoor air problems that are making people really sick and posing
carcinogenic risks, yet it gets ranked "politically" as significant. EPA is
supporting a scam to sell radon testing and remediation "services". This
keeps EPAs political profile high. There is no "radon industry" to
challenge EPA and set the record straight. So its free ride.

Of course, as Cohen has shown, there is no linear relationship between radon
and lung cancer, based on rigorous statistical analysis of radon and lung
cancer data in >1700 US counties based on 272,000 home radon tests by
UPitts, EPA, and state agencies, with rigorous statistical correlations and
regression analysis, including the ability to dismiss any potential
confounding factors. Any health physics or research people with any science
or technical interests should review this paper for its certain validity.

The uranium miner data also demonstrates that, and as Nobel Laureate Rosalyn
Yalow has written, the lung cancer data itself demonstrates that non-smoking
related lung cancers are different forms than the uranium miner data,
proving that radon does not cause lung cancer.

I will find her papers and provide those references if anyone is interested.

Regards,

Jim Muckerheide