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Joshua Barnett's avatar

The precautionary principle is cognitive cancer, with no minimum "safe" dosage rate.

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John Michener's avatar

I had some run in's with Radon exposure issures 40 years ago. I have been curious for some time what the actual risk is. I suspect that the current threshold is set under LNT extrapolations. I know that the lung cancer death rate was very high among Uranium miners, but the miners also were exposed to high levels of SIlica (most of the Uranium is in host sandstone) and smoking was very common among the miners as well, so I would expect it to be quite hard to extract the Radon risk component. But the low Radon threshold drove a lot of remediation and did a lot of damage to housing prices.

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David MacQuigg's avatar

Both sides (LNT vs hormesis) claim to have data supporting their models. The data supporting hormesis is readily available. Anyone who understands basic statistics can verify for themselves that exposure to radon typical of what is found in the USA can reduce your chances of getting lung cancer significantly, like 30%. The data supporting LNT is widely quoted but impossible to get to the original source. https://citizendium.org/wiki/Fear_of_radiation/Debate_Guide#LNT_and_radon,_Controversy_over_Figure_4

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