Radon Threat May Be Overstated - U.S. Scientists

["Sandy Perle" <sandyfl@earthlink.net>]

Latest amongst many recent articles published:

Wednesday January 13 2:18 PM ET 

LONDON (Reuters) - The risks of dying from lung cancer caused 
by naturally occurring radon gas in the home may be much less 
than previously suspected, American scientists reported 
Wednesday.  

Researchers have been warning for the past 20 years of the 
dangers from alpha radiation given off by radon -- a gas that 
bubbles into homes from uranium bearing rocks underground.  

The U.S. National Academy of Sciences puts the radon death toll 
in the United States at 18,000 a year -- making it second only to 
smoking as a cause of lung cancer.  

The estimate are calculated largely by extrapolating from deaths 
among uranium workers who have a huge exposure to radon.

But David Brenner and colleagues at the Center for Radiation 
Research in Columbia University in New York, believe that most 
domestic exposure to radon involves a single alpha particle per cell 
over a year, whereas the miners were frequently exposed to several 
particles per cell over a short period.  

Reporting in New Scientist journal, Brenner argued that 
extrapolating risk from high to low exposure is wrong and that fears 
that thousands of people are dying from radon gas may be 
groundless.  

Brenner exposed 250,000 mouse cells to a single alpha particle 
and found that only one in every 10,000 developed a cancerous 
mutation. He said this was almost indistinguishable from the 
mutation rate with no exposure at all.  

He then repeated the experiment using a random distribution of 
particles. In this case, the cells averaged three mutations per 
10,000 cells. Brenner concluded that most of the damage must 
have been done to cells exposed to more than one particle.  

His results appear to support some recent studies that have failed 
to find a significant link between domestic exposure to radon  
and lung cancer. 

Sandy Perle
E-Mail: sandyfl@earthlink.net 
Personal Website: http://www.geocities.com/capecanaveral/1205

"The object of opening the mind, as of opening 
the mouth, is to close it again on something solid"
              - G. K. Chesterton -
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