Radon: This Silent Killer of Generations

We recently marked the 35th anniversary of the largest nuclear disaster in history. April 26, 1986, may not immediately stand out as a date to remember, but the name Chernobyl will certainly bring to mind a flood of troubling memories. On that fateful day, a routine safety test at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant located in northern Ukraine sparked a fire in one of the reactors. The cooling system was overwhelmed, the core melted, releasing radiation, and many people died. Many others developed cancer and died in subsequent years. Chernobyl graphically showed a generation the dangers of uncontrolled radiation and forever reframed the discussion of nuclear power.??

It seems that for there to be a significant evolution in our thinking about environmental health issues, a pivotal moment is needed to awaken the consciousness of government officials, industry leaders, and the public at large.?

A quick survey of pivotal moments that have increased awareness about environmental issues over the last 80 years include:

· Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 1945

·?Silent Spring?Published, 1962?

· Official Formation of EPA, 1970

· Earth Day, 1970

· Stockholm Conference, 1972

· Love Canal, 1978

· Three Mile Island, 1979

· Bhopal Disaster, 1984

· Exxon Valdez, 1989

· The Rio Earth Summit, 1992

· The Indoor Radon Abatement Act of 1988

· Coal Ash Disaster - Tennessee, 2008

· Deepwater Horizon, 2010

· Federal Radon Action Plan (FRAP) 2011

As you scan the list, I am sure you would include additional events and some you may choose to delete. Still, I am almost equally sure that you are scratching your head and wondering why the launch of the EPA Radon Program and the Indoor Radon Abatement Act of 1988 are included in this list.?

The results of the Chernobyl meltdown were acute and rapid. In contrast, radon exposure is more like a slow leak. Similar to a roulette wheel, radon-induced lung cancer is an event of genetic chance. The greater the radon concentration that you are exposed to over a long period of time, the higher your probability of having a mutagenic cell that will cause you to develop lung cancer.??

At 4.0 pico Curries per liter (pCi/l), the unit of radiation energy exposure for which the government has set a corrective action threshold, the risk of getting lung cancer for nonsmokers is 7 in 1,000. By contrast, the regulated cancer risk from manufactured chemical exposure is set at 1 in 100,000 or 1 in 1,000,000, depending on the chemical. The government has given mother nature a pass when it comes to inflicting lung cancer on the citizenry.?

It is estimated that 693,000 people (approximately 21,000 annually) have died from radon-induced lung cancer since 1988. That is more than all the Americans who have been killed in all the foreign wars combined; only the Civil War and now Covid approach similar numbers.??

Radon is the second-leading cause of lung cancer behind the highly obvious – smoking.?

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) classifies radon as a carcinogen because it can get into the air and increase the risk of lung cancer, which is one of the top-10 causes of cancer-related deaths in the United States.?

Today, there are more than seven million families unknowingly living in homes with elevated radon levels. The boom in new home construction over the last 25-years has led to the growing number of radon-impacted homes. Despite this ever-increasing number, since 2017 Congress, has appropriated less money to the State Indoor Radon Grant (SIRG) program than the year before. These?numbers from the EPA website?illustrate the point.?

· FY 2021 - $7.795 million

· FY 2020 - $7.789 million

· FY 2019 - $7.789 million

· FY 2018 - $7.8 million?

· FY 2017 - $7.9 million?

?When spread across the 10 EPA Regions, it is easy to see that less than one million dollars per region are available for consumer education and programs.?

?By contrast:

·??????2016 Construction of the 2nd Chernobyl Sarcophagus 2.7 billion (US contributing 40% +/-)

·??????2017 National Institute on Drug Abuse received ~$1 billion

·??????2018 Health and Sex Educations received $25 million

·??????2019 HIV/AIDS Infection research received ~$1.1 billion

·??????2020 Guns Safety Research received $25 million?

·??????2020 Covid-19 ~2.59 Trillion??

·??????2021 Transportation Bill included $250 million over 5-years for bicycle lanes

·??????2021 Covid-19 ~1.9 trillion

Each of the issues listed above has merit. Covid-19 is in a category by itself. I included it because the manner of death is similar. The person suffocates to death from a lack of oxygen, and the number of deaths from Covid-19 is about equal to the radon-induced lung cancer deaths since the Radon Abatement Act of 1988. As a country, we moved quickly and spent more real dollars on Covid than any event since WWII. Although the funding mechanism is cloaked by our UN contributions and the European Bank it is possible that the US government may have spent more on building a second radiation containment sarcophagus for the Chernobyl reactor than it has spent protecting it’s own citizens from the dangers of radiation caused by naturally occurring radon gas. ?However, funding for radon testing and education is essential. On average, radon takes more lives each year than any of the following: illegal drug overdoses, AIDS, firearm homicides, secondhand smoke, bicycle accidents, and carbon monoxide.

Chernobyl’s story of acute exposure was deadly and horrifying, as were several of the tragedies listed previously. Still, no single death was more important than the deaths directly attributable to radon-induced lung cancer. Perhaps that is what is missing from the national radon discussion, a single point in time that we can point to which illustrates the importance of radon testing and education, as it can take 5 – 25 years for radon-induced lung cancer to manifest with ongoing exposure.?

Short of that pivotal moment, it is hard to conceive just what it will take for our elected officials, appointed regulators, and public opinion to embrace the need for more funding to stop these very preventable deaths. Medical health physicist Lawrence Dauer of Sloan-Kettering?offered clear facts clarifying the link between radon and lung cancer.???

While the funding for radon education is woefully inadequate, the few dollars available have created beneficial resources like?A Citizen’s Guide to Radon?and other?SIRG resources.

As a young environmental scientist, I worked on several EPA radon research projects, including the first manual Reducing Radon in Structures in 1987. It is part of the reason I am in this industry today and led to the creation of Clean Vapor. It was difficult for me to imagine that something so simple to mitigate was costing people their lives. Our mission at Clean Vapor is simple: To make buildings healthier to protect the people inside. Will there ever be a day when hundreds of radon-induced lung cancer deaths are reported on the evening news? It is unlikely, but that does not diminish the importance of providing everyone with a radon-free home and work environment.?

When it is time for the State Indoor Radon Grant (SIRG) to be renewed, ask your senators and congressperson why the government has decided to ignore this problem. Annually spending two and a half cents per individual is not addressing the issue and will never bring us closer to a viable solution.

The meltdown at Chernobyl was horrible and graphic. Many people perished, and the land will be unusable forever. Covid mortality rates are on the decline, and I am looking forward to the day when it is behind us. If you have not tested your home or place of business, I am encouraging you to do so. If radon concentrations are elevated - mitigate.??

We cannot go back in time and make the relatively small corrections that would have avoided the radiological horrors of Chernobyl. Still, we can do something about the dangers of radiation in our homes, schools, places of business, and certainly in the construction of new buildings. I encourage you to take action both on an individual level and policy level. The life you save may be your own or that of a loved one.