Residential radon and the LNT hypothesis

Abstract

The question whether radon in aboveground situations represents a health hazard is important not only because of the high economic and social costs associated with radon surveys and the reduction of radon levels in homes, in the remediation of former uranium mining areas (e.g. in Saxony, Eastern Germany), etc., but—perhaps more importantly—because the radon controversy became an important test case for the validity of the linear-no-threshold (LNT) hypothesis, the collective dose concept, current relative biological effectiveness (RBE) estimates, and other central issues of legislation and regulatory control of low radiation doses. On the one hand, some institutions claim, based on miners' and a few case-control epidemiological studies (see, e.g., the BEIR VI report), that large numbers of additional lung cancers in the population are due to residential radon. On the other hand, various recent studies, for example, with never-smoking women in high-radon areas, as well as animal and cell experiments, indicate thresholds, perhaps even biopositive effects including the reduction of other types of cancer in areas with increased residential radon levels.