Re: Revigorator

[mph437 <mph437@biomed.abdn.ac.uk>]

> The Revigorator was for drinking water, not for inhaling. Radium decay allowed 
> radon to escape into the water over some hours, and to build up some radon
> daughters. 
> 
> You say "Oooops". Do you have some feel for the concentrations/doses from such 
> an appliance? I have not seen any data and I am curious. I am trying to
> imagine whether the source could be strong enough to enable the
> radon/daughters in the water to be equivalent to many naturally occurring
> radium/radon well water sources, especially at some of the spa areas and other 
> high background areas. Scientific data and studies at these locations do not
> indicate any adverse health effects, with some confirmations of positive
> medical results from patients, at least short term. Do you have any data on
> source/dose rate, or adverse effects from high natural sources? > 
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> Regards, Jim Muckerheide 
> 

The National Radiological Protection Board (NRPB) estimates that 5-6 % of lung
cancers in the UK are caused by Radon and its daughter products. Recently, however, there have been several reports which attempt to dispute this. The problem with 
Radon is that any study of long term effects is usually only based on one set of 
population data (eg. Uranium miners or areas of high natural background levels) and does not take into account other factors such as smoking prevalence within these 
populations.

There is an article in the Journal of Public Health Medicine, Vol 16, No. 4
pp. 465 - 470 by Caroline M. Chaffey and Cameron Bowie called 'Radon and Health
- an Update.' I don't agree with all of its discussion but it has some exellent 
references.

Regards,

Ian Macmillan.		| There are three sides to every story;
E-mail address:		| yours, mine and the truth.
mph437@biomed.abdn.ac.uk|