As a preface, please realize that when I went to college the only thing we were taught about radon is that it interfered with measuring other things, like plutonium, in the air. And natural radiation was considered a nonissue...I mean it's natural, how could it be bad? Well, duh, a rattlesnake bite is natural too.

So, anyway, some years ago I was invited to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN to give a talk on radon measurement methods, same talk I presented at the Health Physics Society meeting years ago, and also at the University of North Carolina. During my talk, I must have said something about the cost of mitigation, and perhaps from the tone of my voice someone deduced that I questioned whether the cost was worth it. This person spoke up, maybe he was a doctor. He asked, "Do you know the cost of treating a single patient with lung cancer?" That sure put me in my place. I responded that No, I did not know but obviously the point being made was that for the cost of treating one lung cancer patient, we could mitigate a large number of homes and perhaps avoid that one lung cancer incidence. Not to mention avoiding the pain and suffering of the victim and the family. This is one example where health care providers were interested in hearing about radon.

And in case you're wondering, as I've come to understand the dose from radon and the associated risk based on epidemiological studies, I firmly believe that we should try to achieve concentrations less than 2 pCi/L when at all possible.