Electric chairs in our homes?

["Pickett, Bruce D" <Bruce.Pickett@PSS.Boeing.com>]

The following short article appears on page 45 of the March 1998 issue
of Popular Science magazine, published by Times Mirror Magazines.

Bruce Pickett
The Boeing Company, Seattle, WA
bruce.d.pickett@boeing.com
------------------------------------------

Fight with Power

THE FUTURE OF radon removal may be as simple as powering up your living
room. In tests conducted under a grant from the EPA, SR Environmental of
Amherst, New York, has shown that electrically charging a few furniture
surfaces continuously can eliminate as much as 90 percent of radon
particles circulating in a large room.

Taking advantage of radon particles' affinity for highly charged
surfaces, scientists attached a 10-kilovolt power supply to various
pieces of furniture -- bookcases, sofas, tables. After about 3 hours,
they found the airborne concentration of radon had decreased 76 to 90
percent, depending on how large a surface area was charged.

The charged surfaces also attracted other pollutants, such as pollen,
spores, cigarette smoke, and dust. That's good for clearing the air, but
bad for occupants who use the furniture. The company is now attempting
to figure out how to either repeatedly clean these surfaces or create a
single collection plate -- say, a bookcase -- with a surface area large
enough to be effective.

Radon, a naturally occurring radioactive gas, is the second-leading
cause of lung cancer in the United States. The gas emanates from trace
amounts of radium found in soil underneath or adjacent to many homes.
The gas itself doesn't do the damage; rather, small particles emitted
from its decay seep through cracks or porous building materials and are
inhaled.

SR Environmental is now conducting more studies to determine whether the
system is feasible. One benefit: It would cost about $400, half that of
the traditional method of subslab piping to remove radon. -- Gunjan
Sinha