Trump's plan to eliminate the EPA's radon program might be good science

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published 31 July 2017

President Trump has declared war on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), vowing to eliminate it "in almost every form" and leave just "little tidbits" intact. In practice, that translates to reducing the agency's budget by a third, including nixing programs pertaining to residential risk from radon gas accumulation.

While many of Trump's proposed EPA cuts are controversial, it turns out this one actually has significant backing within the scientific community. The reason, as Wired explains, is the EPA's standard for indoor radon exposure (4 picocuries per liter of air) is based on fuzzy science:

That number, 4 picocuries, is a funny one. Because here's the thing: The scientific model used to come up with that limit says there's no acceptable level of radon exposure. None. It's called the linear no-threshold model, and it's used to estimate risk for low doses of carcinogenic materials. See, it's not hugely controversial to link lung cancer to high radon levels, like those found in a mineshaft. But it's impossible to directly establish a link between low levels of radon and cancer. [...]In fact, the Health Physics Society (a large scientific organization for radiation safety specialists) has officially stated that radon produces no statistically measurable health effects until levels reach about 27 billion picocuries. Even the EPA itself, in its 2003 assessment of household radon risk, seemed to agree ... [Wired]

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.

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