Re:RSH Disputes BEIR Radon Report

[Carolworth@aol.com]

RADIATION, SCIENCE AND HEALTH		For Immediate Release Feb. 17, 1998
P.O. Box 843					Dateline Washington, DC
						            Call Carol Worth, 
Needham, MA  02194	Contact:   Myron Pollycove, MD, Chairman
(301)415-7884									Theodore Rockwell, Vice Pres. (301)542-9509
Phone (617) 449-2214				Bernard L. Cohen, PhD (412)624-9245


PRESS CONFERENCE TO BE HELD WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 18TH, 8:30am
NATIONAL PRESS CLUB, LISAGOR RM. 


FORTHCOMING REPORT ON RADON
FAILS TO CONSIDER IMPORTANT EVIDENCE

On February 19th, 1998, at 11AM, a press conference is scheduled to announce
the issuance of BEIR-VI, the sixth report on Biological Effects of Ionizing
Radiation, by a special committee set up by the National Research Council of
the National Academy of Sciences.  BEIR-VI deals solely with radon, the
natural radioactive decay product of uranium, which is found all over the
world in varying amounts.  
Radon came into prominence about twenty years ago when scientists began
pointing out that some of the radiation standards being imposed on workers in
nuclear power and nuclear medicine facilities required that radiation levels
be reduced far below the natural radiation level produced by radon in homes
and offices where people had dwelt unconcerned for years.  Radiation
protection policy-makers disregarded this discrepancy until the protests could
no longer be ignored.  Then, instead of deciding that their regulations were
unrealistic, they decided to regulate Nature.  They announced that radon was
one of our foremost public health problems, that (based on hypothetical
calculations) tens of thousands of Americans were dying each year from radon
in their homes.  The Environmental Protection Agency supplied school children
with radon test kits to urge their parents to install expensive "radon
remediation systems."  Almost overnight, radon clauses became standard in real
estate contracts.
BEIR-IV, published in 1988, addressed this situation and recommended strict
limitations on radon in homes and workplaces.  But data continued to come in
showing that radon was not only harmless even at the highest levels
encountered in homes, but that it might even be beneficial.  Theoretical and
experimental work showed that radon, like nearly all toxins, when received in
small amounts acts to stimulate the body's defense mechanisms, improving
longevity and resistance to disease.
In response to continuing pressure from concerned scientists, the Academy set
up a BEIR-VI group early last year to study whether existing radon policy and
regulations should be reevaluated.  This process of review, evaluation and
recommendation is carried out behind closed doors, an unusual situation in
science where open discussion is the rule.  The membership of BEIR committees
is chosen by a continuing Board of Radiation Effects Research (BRER), a small
group of insiders who have controlled the process for decades.  Prominent
dissenters have been weeded out through the years, and the outcome of a BEIR
report is not known publicly until it is published. There is no draft report
circulated among the scientific community for peer review.  Scientists who
took exception to BEIR-IV have had to wait a full ten years to see whether any
change in policy will be recommended.  BRER and committee members, along with
the funding agencies for this study have publicly disparaged major research
producing evidence that flatly contradicts the basis of current policy, but
they have not indicated any scientific reasons to question the findings, and
the authors of such research have not been called to testify before the
committee.  From this, we conclude that the chances are slim of present rules
being revised to be consistent with the best scientific data and theory.
The procedure for releasing the BEIR-VI report aggravates this situation.  The
NAS press conference tomorrow will apparently present only general conclusions
and qualitative supporting statements.  The entire report, with detailed
references, data and rationale, will appear later.  In this situation, we urge
scientists, science writers and reporters not to accept the report as
scientific consensus and to seek out the response of scientists who have been
excluded from the work of the Committee.
This is not a mere academic squabble.  The radon remediation program being set
up by EPA is a multi-billion dollar effort that will continue to grow
indefinitely.  It is reaching into more and more aspects of our lives and our
industries.  And it produces no measurable benefits.  

As an example of the kind of scientific data demonstrating the lack of
deleterious health effects from radon, we present the work of Professor
Bernard L. Cohen of the University of Pittsburgh, who has served as Chairman
of the American Physical Society Division of Nuclear Physics and is a
recognized expert on health effects of radiation.  His work has been publicly
lauded by Nobel laureates Rosalyn Yalow and Hans Bethe and by Frederick Seitz,
past president of the National Academy of Sciences.  Professor Cohen
supervised measurements of radon in more than 350,000 homes.  He has compared
average radon levels in 1729 U.S. counties, representing nearly 90% of the
total U.S. population, and compared these radon levels with lung cancer rates
in each county.  (Radon's primary impact on human health would be lung cancer,
since it is a chemically inert gas whose only pathway into the body is through
inhalation.)  The data show convincingly that, up to the highest radon
concentrations found in homes, the higher the radon level, the lower the
cancer rate - the exact opposite of the effect predicted by the premise on
which current regulations are based.  The magnitude of the discrepancy between
Cohen's data and the current regulatory model is 20 standard deviations - a
statistical measurement of significance, showing that it is virtually certain
that this discrepancy is real and not an artifact.
Cohen's work has been reported in peer-reviewed scientific journals. Questions
raised by critics have been resolved and there are no specific technical
questions remaining unresolved.  The conclusions are supported by a number of
other studies, and there are no robust data contradicting those conclusions.
Yet the BEIR committee has not asked Cohen to testify nor responded
scientifically to his data, and has publicly dismissed this study as being
unreliable because it is an "ecological study," meaning that it is based on
population averages rather than individual cases.  But the scientific
community - and the EPA - often relies on such studies for important policy
decisions, since the accuracy of the data can be estimated by widely-agreed-on
statistical tests.  When large numbers of people are involved, the uncertainty
becomes very small.  In fact, many of the studies that the BEIR committee
calls "case control studies" (and therefore deemed to be generically valid)
are not statistically significant and ignore the fact that individuals living
in the same location have been shown to get greatly different radon doses.
This means that the radon levels assigned to individuals in case control
studies are really averages, just as Cohen's doses are.  The only solution to
that problem is to have a very large number of individuals included in the
study, as Cohen did, so that these variations are averaged out.  The case
control studies cited by the BEIR committee are actually less reliable than a
careful ecological study where confounding factors have been rigorously
tested.
The most reliable data are those taken of human beings in their homes or
workplaces.  Data on uranium miners or other miners, with uncertain individual
radon exposures and working in dusty environments filled with toxic
contaminants known to produce lung cancer, are poor indicators of the home
environment.  
Since the BEIR-VI report has not yet been made public, and the selection of
Committee members, the choice of evidence to be considered, and the
Committee's discussions leading up to its drafting are not open to the public,
we cannot be sure what it will say.  This press conference is to urge
reporters and science writers to examine the basis for the conclusions stated,
and to judge whether all contradictory evidence has been proper considered and
correctly evaluated.  Defining natural radon as a major health hazard has wide
implications and enormous cost.  It is also important to realize that this
situation is not an argument between pro-nukes and anti-nukes.  Most of the
money being made in the nuclear industry today comes from studies of low-level
radiation and from remediation projects that would not be undertaken if
current policy were changed to reflect the data showing that radiation levels
at or below natural radiation background need not be subject to regulation.
Many reputations and much income is derived from the premise that radiation at
any level is a sinister and unprecedented hazard and that those espousing this
view are the ones best qualified to protect us from it.  This fact correlates
well with a list of who gets multi-million dollar study contracts and whose
work is terminated.