I'm in the middle of moving from Texas to New England. In Texas, Radon is such a "not a problem", that I've never considered it before our move. In New England, our basement tested above the "safe" limit (iirc, 4 somethings), so we are having a venterlator installed for ~$1.4k.

In the south, Radon "can" be an issue, but it simply isn't an issue. In New England, it is often an issue.

Nobody in Texas has basements.

Heavy metals in the nearby earth are the obvious parameter here--you need something to decay into radon for there to be radon.

But I think another factor has to do with the water table. In some places the water table rises high enough to flood basements, so you don't usually have basements at all in those places, and subsequently you don't have large reservoirs of radon adjacent to living spaces. I know of some people here in CO (where we have decaying granite in the soil) that don't have a basement and still need a radon ventilator, but it's not very common.

My understanding on why this is, is because in New England there's a lot more granite in the ground. Granite is particularly annoying in that respect because the trace amounts of, i think, uranium and radium that the rock concentrated when it was formed will give off the radon gas when they decay.

and that can mean high outdoor radon levels... a home inspector back in early 2000 told me about a seller sneaking back in and opening basement windows to attempt to pass a radon test (sensors left in the basement over the weekend.) The inspector caught it but let the test run to completion - at which point it failed anyway because the adjacent "forest with exposed granite rocks" was a fine natural radon source...

> In the south, Radon "can" be an issue, but it simply isn't an issue.

There's more to the south than Texas, y'know. I can't recall if radon tests are required during a home inspection here in NC, or just highly recommended, but when I was buying a house last year I toured several homes that had radon mitigation systems installed.

See my other post in this thread, active ventilation is the last resort if passive methods don't get results. Perhaps in the middle of a real-estate transaction it's easier to just pull the trigger on the sure-fire method and get it over and done with...

...but if you ever get annoyed by the whir of the fan, unplug it for a month and do an alpha-track monitor. (Or get a continuous monitor, they're cheap now!) There's every chance that simply having the cracks caulked and the piping in place, might do the trick all on its own, with no need for active depressurization.

This claim (which ultimately came from the EPA) is suspect at best. It just comes from assuming a Linear No-Threshold model, which flatly contradicts the available body of medical evidence.

https://youtu.be/TYZglUjLE0Y

Thanks for posting this, I will check it out. As a Midwesterner with a basement I had once looked into those claims about radon as the second-highest cause of lung cancer with concern and found the evidence much weaker than I expected. Even by EPA estimates[0] almost 90% of the lung cancer deaths attributed to radon are smokers (i.e. who have already weakened lungs), and there didn't seem to be good evidence of damage from basement radon for non-smokers.

[0]https://www.epa.gov/radon/health-risk-radon

Let me preemptively disclaim that I do have nitpicks about the talk I linked, but IMO his main argument is sound.

In particular I think his scientific explanations aren't always fully accurate, and he worries about measurement minutia very strenuously. Also at one point he says you could breathe 80% radon/20% oxygen, which while chemically this is true, radiologically it would be suicidal.

Those nitpicks aside, his point about the EPA LNT model having no clothes is spot on. After "the scales fell from my eyes," now I can't not notice how all those same Party Line Claims get parroted in every piece of radon-related content.

Another glimpse down the rabbit hole is this interview with the late Dr Bernie Cohen, who studied the link between residential radon and cancer:

https://youtu.be/xhkBLhw-8pk

The alternative to LNT is to conservatively assume radiation has the maximum effect not ruled out by evidence (after all, radiation is not a criminal defendant that's innocent until proven guilty). This would make low level radiation more dangerous than predicted by LNT, not less.

>The alternative to LNT is to conservatively assume radiation has the maximum effect not ruled out by evidence

No, the alternative is to look at the actual data (including the actual dose-response curves), rather than fabricating fraudulent data to fit the LNT model (externally imposing a wrongly-shaped dose-response curve by fiat).

Here's one of the more relevant timestamps from the talk, a section which then runs on into Part 3.[0]

However to know what's going on, you really should just watch the whole thing prior to formulating your next counterpoint. Otherwise this immediately devolves into a very long and boring comment thread, where I laboriously digest the points from the video and feed them to you through an HN comment-sized straw. ;)

[0] https://youtu.be/37pCurE0nxo?t=1671

The LNT is consistent with the real world data, cherrypicked bullshit from pseudoscientists notwithstanding.

This is why the NRC recently rejected a call to stop using LNT in setting regulations. Their responses to the details of the petitions are pretty damning.

https://www.regulations.gov/document/NRC-2015-0057-0671

Now, at the very low doses typical of large scale exposure from nuclear accidents, it's true that the evidence does not directly require LNT. That's because the effect predicted by LNT is so small at those doses that it's swamped by noise and unmodelled biases. No practically obtainable data could do the trick.

But note what this means: the data at those low doses is so poor that it's consistent with an effect greater than from LNT. It cannot rule this out.

I'll add that a favorite pseudoscientific claim from the radiation apologists, radiation hormesis, would imply a larger effect from radiation at low doses than predicted by LNT. That's because hormesis putatively acts by inducing repair mechanisms above some dose, bending the curve downward. Below that putative threshold, the curve has a high slope (and thus more damage per increment of dose) than the linear curve of the LNT.

My mistake. You're right.

Go back and read about the malfeasance of the petitioners there. They do things like cite a study, neglecting later data from the same study where the effect they want no longer shows up in the better data.

Policy has to go beyond what is rigorously demonstrated. It's not like criminal law. Technologies are not innocent until proven guilty. Just because LNT cannot be demonstrated at the doses relevant to nuclear accidents doesn't mean regulators should assume no effect.

Claims of malfeasance go in both directions.

>Policy has to go beyond what is rigorously demonstrated.

Thanks. I can see we're done here.

Yes, indeed. We are done. You are living in a fantasyland, not in the real world of how regulation and politics actually work.

But at least you can admit LNT is consistent with the evidence? The claim to the contrary is an outright lie.

Sure why not? If it makes your day get any brighter: you're always right and good, and I'm always wrong and bad. :)

Cheers.

Indeed, it's good to be cautious of such claims. Low level radiation could be worse than predicted by the LNT.

It feels like this is something that should be easily amenable to statistical analysis.

Large numbers of people get diagnosed with lung cancer; smoking rates vary widely and smoking is typically recorded in patient histories; typical radon levels vary widely with geography and are recorded / known. This looks like a near perfect natural experiment, no?

That research was done. The results weren't what regulators expected, so you never got to hear about them.

https://youtu.be/xhkBLhw-8pk