Resource Bank

The U.S. EPA Region 6 Radon Stakeholder's Workshop was held on March 28, 2011, in Little Rock, Ark. A pacing event for the Radon Leaders Saving Lives Campaign, the Workshop provided an opportunity for states, tribes and Regional representatives in Region 6 to share best practices from the field and to talk about how to apply that learning to drive results and save lives. The complete materials from the Workshop are available for download.

Epidemiological Evidence for Possible Radiation Hormesis from Radon Exposure: A Case-Control Study Conducted in Worcester, Ma.

Richard E. Thompson, Department of Biostatistics, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

OBJECTIVE. Lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer mortality in both men and
women. Tobacco use causes the vast majority of lung cancer in women but does not explain
all cases, because about one in five women who develop lung cancer have never smoked.

CONCLUSION. Environmental exposures, genetic predisposition, hormonal factors,
and viral infection may all play a role in lung cancer in women. A better understanding may
provide an avenue to more effective screening, diagnosis, and therapy.

BACKGROUND: Case-control studies conducted in North America, Europe, and Asia provided evidence of increased lung cancer risk due to radon in homes. Here, the association between residential radon and lung cancer mortality was examined in a large-scale cohort study.

Attached are abstracts of radon papers published in 2010. Papers that referenced transforms and tomography were excluded. The file "Summary radon 2010.pdf" is a quick summary but contains all "radon" papers, including those related to transforms and tomography.

A summary of scientific journal articles regarding Rn-222 shows that the most articles are published in Radiation Protection Dosimetry (53), Radiation Measurements (44) and J. of Environmental Radioactivity (36).

Radon adsorption by activated charcoal collectors is known to be largely affected by temperature and relative humidity. Quantitative models are, however, still needed for accurate radon estimation in a variable environment. The following abstract is from a paper in the Journal of Environmental Radioactivity - introducting a temperature calibration formula based on the gas adsorption theory to evaluate the radon concentration in air from the average temperature, collection time and liquid scintillation count rate.

An Excel document with hyperlinks that displays up-to-date Census demographic information for each U.S. state and county - alongside an EPA's radon zone map. This tool provides for easy county by county comparisons of radon zones and demographic data.

The Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) provides information on radon and how to protect your family's health. Much of the soil in the Upper Midwest contains widespread uranium and radium. These minerals continuously break down to release radon gas. Therefore, Minnesota's geology provides an ongoing supply of radon.