I am proximate to the Pacific Ocean,
Enjoying the spring air? Well, take a deep breath New York.
Radon is the second leading cause of lung cancer in the United States and the number one cause of lung cancer among non-smokers, resulting in 21,000 lung cancer deaths every year.
So why am I mentioning this now? Well, recent research reported from scientists at Johns Hopkins reiterates the wisdom of legislation introduced by assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal and senator Diane Savino mandating that all natural gas sold in New York must contain safe radon levels.
Joan A. Casey and her scientific team recently reported that radon levels in Pennsylvania have risen since hydraulic fracturing of natural gas commenced. The researchers said they “found a statistically significant association between proximity to unconventional natural gas wells drilled in the Marcellus shale and first floor radon concentration in the summer,” suggesting “a pathway through outdoor ambient air.”
The Johns Hopkins finding renews concern about increased exposure to radon due to natural gas obtained through unconventional methods, including horizontal drilling and high volume hydraulic fracturing. Further studies are clearly needed to determine why the radon level in areas of Pennsylvania with 100 or more shale gas wells is significantly elevated and what can be done to control increased radon exposure.
Studies are also needed to be sure the extracted natural gas itself does not contain elevated radon as major health organizations (including the American Medical Association, American Lung Association, U.S. Surgeon General, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the World Health Organization) agree that reducing radon exposure is a major health imperative.
So now is the time to enact legal protections to ensure radon levels from natural gas remain safe.
Overwhelmingly, New Yorkers use natural gas for cooking and heat. Former New York City Department of Environmental Protection commissioner Al Appleton posed it best when he asked whether New Yorkers wanted a side of radon with their meals.
Proposed radon bill A778-2015/S3414-2015 is designed to ensure that the number of premature deaths does not grow exponentially as a result of exposure to radon and other forms of technologically enhanced naturally occurring radioactive materials (TENORM) in natural gas used by New Yorkers.
Until recently, radon exposure in New York was principally caused by ground emissions through cracked or leaking foundations in buildings and through use of groundwater contaminated from radon.
Radon from Marcellus Shale natural gas is a new peril. EPA studies definitively show that soils in the Marcellus Shale region, where the natural gas extraction industry is rapidly expanding, contain significant concentrations of NORM. As such, gas extracted from the Marcellus and Devonian Shales could contain levels of TENORM that raise health concerns. In fact, a USGS study of 11 Pennsylvania wells tested at the wellhead suggested that natural gas from shale may have higher radon levels than natural gas from other sources.
To date, few peer-reviewed, independent studies have been done to determine the nature and extent to which Marcellus Shale natural gas contains TENORM (the so-called “top of the well” studies). No systematic, peer reviewed studies measured the amount of TENORM in Marcellus natural gas found in end-user kitchens, boilers or homes (“end of the line” studies).
Let me focus on the facts we do know. The natural gas wells being drilled in the Marcellus extend about 1 mile deep and 1 mile or more long through areas that are documented to contain high levels of NORM. The time it takes to transport natural gas from the top of the well in the Marcellus to the end of the line in New York is a matter of hours—- much less than the 3.8 day half-life, the time it takes for TENORM to naturally dissipate.
According Mark Hudson, an oil and gas industry writer, “testing for radon is quick, inexpensive - and, given the potential volatility of the discussion, invaluable.”
Proposed bill A778-2015/S3414-2015 is an important measure because the bill creates incentives for industry to test natural gas before TENORM is delivered into New York.
If, as the oil and gas industry contends, there is little NORM in Marcellus natural gas, then there will be little to no cost for the energy industry to comply with A778-2015/S3414-2015 . If the industry is correct that there is no potential public health problem, then there is no cost to mitigate radon levels before delivery to the public.
If, on the other hand, elevated radon levels are found in natural gas, then the cost of reducing exposure will save lives (and avoid a potential epidemic of lung cancer). Reducing exposure will also reduce future public health care costs for the state of New York.
Simply said, failure to ensure that there are no elevated radon levels in natural gas delivered to New York homes and businesses could cause a significant uptick in lung cancer in future decades.
The Johns Hopkins study reinforces concerns that radon in drilling is a public health concern in need of further review. Proposed radon bill A778-2015/S3414-2015 takes the important step of requiring industry to demonstrate that all natural gas delivered to homes and businesses in New York is safe. The legislation does not stipulate how industry delivers safe gas.
Under the proposal, natural gas that is not safe cannot be sold in New York. Allowing only the sale of radon-free or low-radon natural gas is a notion we can all live with.
chilyb wrote:all I have to say in reply is that the fukushima catastrophe isn't helping anyone. What is the long term waste stategy again?
pstarr wrote:Wasn't the plume like due here, like, I don't know, like 2 or 3 years ago?
Still a groovy happy surfin' safari here NorCal lol
Cigarettes & Radiation…
One theory on lung cancer which brings both air-borne radon and cigarettes to a comparable assessment is the amount of radiation contained in both. Because tobacco is grown in soils fertilized by Phosphorous (radioactive) enriched materials, polonium-210 and lead-210 (radioactive) are resident in the tobacco leaves. When smoked, this radiation is transferred to the smoker’s lungs, and then exhaled to the environment. If contained in a room or car, this radiation filled smoke can be inhaled by non-smokers, causing lung damage. Two articles on the subject are…
Radioactivity in Cigarette Smoke
Winters-TH, Franza-JR
New England Journal of Medicine, 1982; 306(6): 364-365
To the Editor: During the 17 years since the Surgeon General's first report on smoking, intense research activity has been focused on the carcinogenic potential of the tar component of cigarette smoke. Only one definite chemical carcinogen -- benzopyrene -- has been found. Conspicuous because of its absence is research into the role of the radioactive component of cigarette smoke.
The alpha emitters polonium-210 and lead-210 are highly concentrated on tobacco trichomes and insoluble particles in cigarette smoke (1). The major source of the polonium is phosphate fertilizer, which is used in growing tobacco. The trichomes of the leaves concentrate the polonium, which persists when tobacco is dried and processed.
Levels of Po-210 were measured in cigarette smoke by Radford and Hunt (2) and in the bronchial epithelium of smokers and nonsmokers by Little et al. (3) After inhalation, ciliary action causes the insoluble radioactive particles to accumulate at the bifurcation of segmental bronchi, a common site of origin of bronchogenic carcinomas.
In a person smoking 1 1/2 packs of cigarettes per day, the radiation dose to the bronchial epithelium in areas of bifurcation is 8000 mrem per year -- the equivalent of the dose to the skin from 300 x-ray films of the chest per year. This figure is comparable to total-body exposure to natural background radiation containing 80 mrem per year in someone living in the Boston area.
It is a common practive to assume that the exposure received from a radiation source is distributed throughout a tissue. In this way, a high level of exposure in a localized region -- e.g. bronchial epithelium -- is averaged out over the entire tissue mass, suggesting a low level of exposure. However, alpha particles have a range of only 40 um in the body. A cell nucleus of 5 to 6 um that is traversed by a single alpha particle receives a dose of 1000 rems. Thus, although the total tissue dose might be considered negligible, cells close to an alpha source receive high doses. The Po-210 alpha activity of cigarette smoke may be a very effective carcinogen if a multiple mutation mechanism is involved.
Radford and Hunt have determined that 75 per cent of the alpha activity of cigarette smoke enters the ambient air and is unabsorbed by the smoker, (2) making it available for deposit in the lungs of others. Little et al. have measured levels of Po-210 in the lungs of nonsmokers that may not be accounted for on the basis of natural exposure to this isotope.
The detrimental effects of tobacco smoke have been considerably underestimated, making it less likely that chemical carcinogens alone are responsible for the observed incidence of tobacco-related carcinoma. Alpha emitters in cigarette smoke result in appreciable radiation exposure to the bronchial epithelium of smokers and probably secondhand smokers. Alpha radiation is a possible etio- logic factor in tobacco-related carcinoma, and it deserves further study.
Thomas H. Winters, M.D.
Joseph R. Di Franza, M.D.
University of Massachusetts Medical Center
Worcester, Ma 01605
How much radiation dose is received by a cigarette smoker?
Interestingly, this subject was initially investigated some 40 years ago by scientists at the School of Public Health at Harvard University. Working with physicians in the neighboring Harvard teaching hospitals, they were able to obtain lungs taken during autopsies of smokers who had died from lung cancer. The School of Public Health scientists carefully analyzed samples from selected areas of these lungs and found that they contained relatively high concentrations of 210Po (polonium-210), a naturally occurring radionuclide that the International Commission on Radiological Protection considers to be one of the most hazardous of all radioactive materials. In fact, it is far more hazardous than 239Pu (plutonium-239). Of particular significance was that the Harvard studies showed that this radionuclide tended to concentrate in "hot spots" at bifurcations of segmental bronchi within the lungs, precisely the areas where lung cancer originates among cigarette smokers.
Armed with this information, studies were conducted to determine the source of the 210Po. Although the initial assumption was that it was taken up by the tobacco plant from the soil, the investigations revealed that it was deposited on the leaves of the plants (which are large and sticky) from the air. Just as the decay of naturally occurring radium in the soil often results in the presence of relatively high concentrations of radon and its radioactive decay products in the air inside buildings, the decay of radium in the soil outdoors results in the presence of radon and its decay products in the surrounding air. Whereas radon is a gas, its radioactive decay products are solids. Enhancing the adherence of these decay products to the tobacco leaves is the fact that they are electrically charged and readily adhere to any surface with which they come into contact. When a smoker lights a cigarette, the 210Po is volatilized and, when he/she inhales, it is deposited in the lungs.
Based on careful assessments of the concentrations of 210Po in the lung tissues, it was estimated that the "hot spots" received an annual dose of about 160 millisievert (about 16,000 millirem), two of the more common units for expressing doses from ionizing radiation. To provide perspective, it is useful to compare this dose to the limit stipulated, for example, by the US Environmental Protection Agency for members of the US public. Making this difficult in this case, however, is that the annual dose limit for members of the public (1 millisievert, or 100 millirem) is expressed in terms of a dose to the whole body, whereas, as noted above, the dose to a smoker is limited to a very small portion of the body.
Nonetheless, in a report published in 1987, the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements (NCRP 1987) sought to make such a comparison, the tentative outcome of which suggested that the annual dose to a smoker (when converted into an equivalent dose to the whole body) was more than 10 times the annual dose limit for a member of the public. Having provided this estimate, however, the NCRP went on to state that they would prefer not to make such a comparison. That is to say, the comparison to the annual whole-body dose limit may not be completely valid.
In a similar manner, the scientists at Harvard, while acknowledging that the dose to a smoker was high, were quick to recognize that 210Po was only one of a multitude of carcinogenic compounds in cigarettes. For this reason, they were hesitant to cite 210Po as a primary source of lung cancer among cigarette smokers. Based on these considerations, their conclusion was that "we believe 210Po may be an important factor in the initiation of bronchial carcinoma in humans" (Little et al. 1965).
Dade W. Moeller, CHP, PhD
References
Little JB, Radford EP Jr, McCombs HL, Hunt VR. Distribution of Polonium210 in pulmonary tissues of cigarette smokers. New England Journal of Medicine 273: 1343-1351; 16 December 1965.
National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements. Radiation exposure of the US population from consumer products and miscellaneous sources. Bethesda, MD: NCRP; NCRP Report No. 95; 1987.
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
dohboi wrote:Other things are worse for you, therefor nukes must be great.
Rock-solid logic, there, T!
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Return to Environment, Weather & Climate
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 18 guests