When I sold my big old house in Mount Rainier, I considered it my duty to the new owners to test it for radon. Radon-testing was "in" in 1989-90. As I recall, the rating on 36th Street was so low it was not even on the chart. I was relieved.
The House of Representatives has since suggested it might be good to require sellers like me to do what I did, regardless of the radon findings in an area. The whole situation perpetuates what author and political scientist Dr. Leonard Cole called at the time the perfect Reagan environmental issue; caused by nature whom no one can blame or sue.
Sadly, the present administration has clung to this attitude, possibly through willingness to err on the side of caution and a lack of time or budget to research the realities.
Dr. Cole, in fact, wrote a book about the problem.
His approach in "Element of Risk: The Politics of Radon" is serious on wry.
Suppose, he supposes, that the government decided to spend $15 billion or more to lessen the dangers of gravity; to protect humans from our regrettable tendency to fall down. The indignation would be equaled by the roars of laughter -- I think.
But, according to Dr. Cole, this kind of action is actually happening in the realm of radon, a naturally-occurring earthly phenomenon.
The EPA and a list of for-profit and trade-related groups have a good thing going with radon and are riding to the rescue whether we need it or not.
Sadly, too, media accepts press releases when they come from certain sources. many editors do not realize that the Centers for Disease Control, for instance, are lashed to the mast of government policy and do not issue "findings" in contradiction of those policies.
Senate and House bills have suggested that HUD regulations of the future give homebuyers or renters the right to full radon information before committing to the deal. Sounds bland enough. Much of the bills' content deals with the "sick building" problem.
Scientists who testified at the legislative hearings declared the current government radon policy far too aggressive.
Since radon's emergence into public consciousness in the mid 1980s, alarming figures have been published which are provably applicable only in rare geologic locations and occupations, such as mining. They do not apply to the average home.
Author Cole said that there have been no findings of statistically significant correlation between home-rated radon levels and lung cancer.
In Cole's opinion, the Environmental Protection Agency has "created an industry." There is now a bureaucracy and growth system of grantsmanship involved in research on, testing for and mitigation of radon.
Cole expands on his view with expertise-reinforced clarity in his book, published by AAAS Press, a division of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Not an easy read, this volume pulls the reader along because Cole is tearing the wraps off influences -- political, industrial and environmental -- over something you and I may have worried about.
What does it really mean to Maryland's home-buyers and sellers? In most of Maryland, in fact, radon is not a peril, even to the EPA.
Michael Sullivan, spokesperson for the Maryland State Department of the Environment says that of all the regions of Maryland, the Eastern Shore consistently comes up with the lowest radon readings, to the relief of all you vacationers. Prince George's County, too, has very low ratings, with few locations resting on the kind of rock which yields high readings. Even those readings are not fatally insidious -- no Love Canal here. Opening windows or running a good exhaust system under the house or in the basement is recommended.
Dr. Rosalyn S. Yalow, Nobel Prize winner in Physiology of Medicine in 1977, regards science as "sensible thinking" and has remarked "How ridiculous the EPA's radon program is."
Some scientists go along to get along, Yalow admits, "Because they would lose their grants if there were no radon program."
The cost of testing, and then "mitigating" (making prescribed ventilation changes), in all U.S. homes to the EPA-set safe level of radon would cost about $20 billion. Dr. Anthony V. Nero, Jr., a physicist at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, University of California, advocates concentrating on about 100,000 homes which, according to geological estimates, are above 20 picocuries of radon per liter of air.
Those 100,000 homes would be found where uranium concentrations exist. Dr. Nero estimates that, in fact, "90 percent of these high radon houses might be in about ten percent of the country." The cost of an appropriate mitigation program, in his opinion, would be about $500 million. Still serious money for most of us, but a far cry from $20 billion!
How did the radon "boom" get such impetus? Well, in an interview, Dr. Cole said radon was the perfect "Reagan environmental." Its real threat remains uncertain. It is a totally natural substance, which can't be blamed on any industry. It can't be eradicated because it has been a part of the planet for billions of years. So its promotion value in certain hands would never end. And the costs of detection and mitigation would be borne largely by the householder. Perfect.
The present policy emerged and solidified under Reagan, Cole said, but leadership for aggressive radon issues, while once supported by the former liberal Democratic leadership in the House and the Senate, is a natural for the current right. Too bad.
"A word of sanity is all I'm looking for here," said the author. "I am not [ideological] at all on this issue.... We have people starving. We have homeless people. We have lung cancers from cigarette smokers which we know can be stopped. And the government is spending money on this... It is crazy."
P.O. Box 2309 Ocean City, MD 21842 jocee@shore.intercom.net Other Writings by Jo Campbell