I have been on the MIT committee for nearly 2.5 years. I am writing this not as a committee member but as someone involved in this industry since 1996. I came to the conclusion that much of the complexity in the ANSI-AARST SGM-SF 2017/2020 standard for single family home “soil gas” mitigation is due to the additional requirements for Vapor Intrusion (VI) work that are not needed for radon. The potential harmonization of SF with MF and LB into one standard would also raise the level of the entire standard.
For those interested in how we got here, I have done a bit of research. This was put into motion many years ago –AARST added Vapor Intrusion to its repertoire around 2014, started pursuing ISO 17024 around 2015, added QA requirements in 2014, OM&M in 2015. These things were mentioned in various issues of the Radon Reporter.
There was a committee formed sometime around 2014 to make a new single family home radon mitigation standard as an ANSI-AARST standard. There were 33 people, plus Spruce co-owner Dave Kapturowski as chair, on the committee writing SGM-SF-2017. The breakdown of affiliations has always troubled me. There were 7 HUD people (and no disrespect to them, but I doubt any had hands-on radon mitigation experience). There were 15 government people total, including HUD, EPA and state radon reps. And 10 people specifically as radon reps, but when you take off government people, only 7 of the 33 total were designated to protect radon’s interests.
But also, this committee had 16 VI representatives (or 14 – 2 EPA members were not specified VI or Rn but were among the VI people). Anyone would expect a higher level than minimum requirements, based on the number of both government and VI people. This is why the standard has so many new and cumbersome requirements – desirable and needed for VI but not for radon.
I do acknowledge the time and efforts made by people who are AARST volunteers, on the board and on the committees as well as for NRPP. This work requires a significant amount of time and most people are highly invested in their work. Many have been involved with AARST in various positions for decades, and it is understandable that they would be offended to have their work product criticized.
But public comments on standards is by its nature a form of criticism of the standards. When SGM-SF-2017 was being written and issued, it was required to be used nowhere, and got little attention. But the ANSI-AARST standards now have the force of law and are enforced with fines and threats of losing one's license in some states, and the same is planned for all states. So everyone should be reviewing each word carefully and not be inhibited from making comments/objections/suggestions, and AARST should be receptive towards making changes to requirements that people who are using the standard in the real world have found to be problematic.
Maybe this is a great example of why there should be term limits/time limits on people's service, and limits on the number of employees or volunteers from each company being involved in AARST. It is unfair that only very few companies bear the burden of AARST work, and on the other hand, unfair that only a few are making the decisions and setting the direction for the entire radon industry. And we, the radon community, have no idea how many people are involved on all the various committees, since only the chairs are listed, but I think some companies are sacrificing significant manhours to AARST while others are left out. I think making this transparent, with all committee meeting minutes published, would help us truly appreciate the work of AARST.
Hopefully Dallas can commit to making these administrative changes, and that the AARST, NRPP and the Standards Consortium will be a partner with radon professionals instead of an adversary that uses policies and procedures to ignore valid complaints and concerns.