Re: BEIR VI and the Numbers???

["Otto G. Raabe" <ograabe@ucdavis.edu>]

February 23, 1998

To look at the relative effectiveness of radon progeny irradiation in
causing lung cancer deaths, you need to consider that percent of all people
who die each year. If there are 1.5 million deaths per year from all causes
in the U.S. (a guess), the EPA numbers would say that about 0.2% of all
deaths are lung cancer deaths from radon progeny among non-smokers and
about 1.2% of all deaths are lung cancer deaths from radon progeny among
smokers. The smoker-radon mix leads to augmented response of about 6 times
over non-smokers in this EPA view of the world of public risk to radon
progeny. 

Personally, I believe that the risk to the public from typical levels of
radon in homes is considerably smaller than the BEIR VI (Lubin) model
suggests, and is quite small for homes with air concentration less than
about 10 pCi/L.

Otto
		*****************************************************
		Prof. Otto G. Raabe, Ph.D., CHP
                [President, Health Physics Society, 1997-1998]
		Institute of Toxicology & Environmental Health (ITEH)
		     (Street address: Old Davis Road)
		University of California, Davis, CA 95616
		Phone: 530-752-7754  FAX: 530-758-6140 [NEW AREA CODE]
		E-mail ograabe@ucdavis.edu