What an odd assortment of base locations. Having spent 22 years on Active Duty and being familiar with some of those bases as well as having spent 12+ years in the radon business I have some issues with that report.

What are your issues with the report?

I have an issue with the statement: "Radon is the most significant environmental health risk present in GO-GC military housing." the environmental standards in Germany, Japan, Korea are much different than ours for many (no data comparison cited I know) environmental toxins. Radon may be the least of the communities concerns. This 'splashy' quote is itself not followed by any peer reviewed citations to back up the claim. No data, just words to attract outrage without corroboration. Never should have been published as printed.

I would be interested, too, in hearing what Mark Perry identifies as issues with the report, and what Lucy Lim might suggest may potentially be worse environmental health risks than radon in GO-GC military housing. For instance, could occupants there perhaps be subject to certain exposures to toxins not common in civilian housing?

In any case, however, the problem of radon as a major environmental health hazard (if not necessarily always "the worst" in every situation) should be given its due, at least where building structure and operation interact unfavorably with significant source strength and sub-foundation permeability.

There are many areas in the United States and in buildings around the world where radon remains a significant health risk, and the OIG's review does call attention to the great variability in how well the radon hazard is managed, and provides a service worthy of proper attention.

The statistics I have seen for lung cancer incidence have shown African American men as significantly higher risk than other groups for reasons that aren't clear to me. This group as well as all service men and women living at military bases in hot climate regions typically have living quarters that have very low air exchange rates that exasperate the radon exposure potential. In the past Dave Wilson has seen radon levels as a whole increase when buildings on the bases are renovated with tighter windows and doors and outdoor air is not included.

"Radon is the most significant environmental health risk present in GO-GC military housing."

This statement is just fine as it is. I have 400 years of data to confirm the risks are pretty high if conditions are right.

It seems that the data is very selective and misrepresents the reality of “military housing”. There are approximately 800 US bases around the world, yet only 8 were used in the evaluation. In just the US alone there are approximately 197 bases, yet only 1 US base was used in the evaluation. This is not counting the thousands of official “sites” maintained by the DoD or the secretive shadow bases throughout the world. I feel the sample group of 8 bases was unnecessarily inadequate to draw any conclusions from and that the title of the article “Radon in Military Housing” is completely misleading.

The article states that these 8 bases represent 41% of government-owned and government-controlled (GO-GC) military housing worldwide. Here is the rub, most military housing is managed by private companies. So, by only focusing on GO-GC they have chosen to ignore the vast majority of military housing.

Having spent over 22 years on active duty, this report looks like someone wanted to take a trip to Asia, on the governments expense, and used this study as an excuse. I once made a similar trip, and did not even have to publish a report.

On a separate, but somewhat related note I want to offer some anecdotal information for what it is worth. In the past 3 years I have radon tested approximately 300 military houses on Scott AFB, IL. I can also state that in 1990 the military housing I lived in on Yokota AB, Japan was tested with an Alpha track type device.

Thanks for the additional perspectives and to Mark for explaining his concerns. While I leave it to the author of the blog post to describe the circumstances under which the information was gathered, I must also recognize the appropriateness of some review of radon management being conducted in military housing.

I haven't looked at the details of the OIG report, but it would not surprise me to learn that only the GO-GC housing (i.e., not privately owned, privately managed) would be subject to their review processes, in which case 41% of such housing is much more likely to represent a fair sample of that subset, if that is indeed all that is within OIG's purview.

Mark emphasizes some points that are worthwhile to help put this study into context, and would be worthwhile amendments to the blog post to demonstrate the much larger need that exist beyond GO-GC military housing, but the fact that an investigation and analysis has been done on some small subset of the universe of military housing does not detract from its value as far as that investigation goes, and as long as readers are not led to draw conclusions beyond the scope of the study.

As for the title, it is not uncommon to give blog posts such brief headings, not intending to communicate what might be done by a more academic approach, such as "A Review of Radon Management Practices in a Sampling of United States Government-Owned and Government-Controlled Military Housing." Given that the post was not entitled "Radon in All U.S. Military Housing" and based on the contents of the article, I don't read the brief title used as an attempt to mislead readers. The context and limitations of the analysis soon become plain to the reader.