Jim McNees Alabama
We were taken down that path by Stephen Page of EPA. The justifications and rationale for the EPA decision to advocate short-term testing can be found in Stephen Page's 1994 article entitled "Indoor Radon: A Case Study in Risk Communication" in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. [Am J Prev Med 1994; 10 (suppl 1): 15-8] Quoting Mr. Page, "Radon Program experience and risk communication research indicate that as few as 9% of the population are willing to conduct the long-term measurements. What, then, should we recommend as a testing procedure? A long-term testing procedure that would initiate a limited number of perfect tests or an alternate short-term testing procedure that would result in a greater number of good tests?"
The basic reasoning was that short-term testing is something that the public will do.
Years ago Alabama tried advocating year long tests in our karst areas. It just didn't work very well becasue it produced so few valid results for the program effort expended.
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