From an article on the PatientWorthy.com website

Widely used as a cancer therapy and to help relieve pain from autoimmune diseases, radon therapy is gaining popularity, especially for people looking for a ankylosing spondylitis (AS) treatment.

Pam Alvarez, featured on Radonmine.com, swears by the radon mines in Boulder, MT for her ankylosing spondylitis treatment. She says, “My second 10 day stay was October 2006.  I’m now at home doing what I love to do instead of in a doctor’s office thinking about my aches and pains.”

The video game Far Cry 5 was modeled after the Free Enterprise mine, several summers ago developers came and photographed and toured the mine. The game is identical to our underground tunnels with the addition of toxic fumes called “bliss” and some barrels. Here is an image from the game.

Caoimhín P. Connell
Forensic Industrial Hygienist

Forensic Applications Consulting Technologies, Inc.
185 Bounty Hunter’s Lane, Bailey CO 80421 Tel: 303 903-7494

Introduction

A large portion of the general population is under the impression that the scientific community has concluded that exposure to indoor radon conclusively causes cancer, and that there is scientific consensus of this “fact.” Most people are not aware of the fact that there are actually no conclusive studies that have ever demonstrated that exposure to indoor radon, as commonly seen in the overwhelming vast majority of houses, increases the risk of cancer by any amount, and in fact, in the larger and better studies, what we see is that the risk of cancer actually goes down with increasing radon concentrations; to a critical elevated level (not seen in houses) wherein the risk then begins to rise. But those kinds of radon levels where risk increases is virtually never seen in houses.

In fact, even the EPA, buried deep within its risk estimates,³ very clearly reports that it has no evidence that the risk increases, and that even their studies conclude that as radon concentrations in in homes go up, lung cancer rates go down.

The elevated estimates of risk typically reported to the general population have come exclusively from (discredited) mathematical models, supported by a billion dollar radon industry (including academia), for which there is actually very little to no actual scientific support.

The purpose of this discussion is to demonstrate that what people think a scientific paper says, and what the scientific paper may actually say, may in fact be two very different things.

Some visitors who have read our general web discussion on radon wherein we discussion some of these issues, ask about the validity of using risk assessments (mostly by the US EPA), that were published ten or more years ago. Regardless of the date of the risk assessment article, radiation remains the same, human physiology is still the same, and no new profound advances have been made in Euclidean mathematics. As such, although our general web discussion on radon references EPA documents written perhaps ten years ago, the gravamen of the original discussion remains pretty much the same and current with today’s thinking

Some people in the radon industry reference newer articles arguing that newer scientific studies are available that conclusively prove, beyond any doubt, that exposure to residential radon, at concentrations normally seen in houses causes cancer. As an example, one individual, who earns his living by selling radon testing services – and therefore has a vested interest in promoting the notion that indoor radon causes cancer- pointed to three new published studies claiming the new studies prove that residential radon exposure causes cancer. FACTs agreed to provide a critical review of the papers; and we have presented those reviews here.

The reviews presented here have been written for a non-scientific audience. As such, in some cases, the specific language used may lack our normal precision for the sake of clarity. As will be seen, none of the papers support the argument that exposure to radon, as typically seen in residences, poses a demonstrable or significant threat to public health.

The presentation of these papers as a supposed “proof” is a symptom of our society wherein information is presented by people who have never actually read the scientific data or studies, and have no real idea as to what is actually being said by the technical authors. We see this happening more and more, especially in the area of environmental issues such as global warming, wherein the general public has been duped into thinking that there is a scientific basis for the proposition, and that there is a scientific consensus; for which there is no science to support the claims, but there is a lot of emotion created by heavy handed politics. As such, a large fraction of western society presumes that if their government has made a policy regarding the risks of some particular event, then by that very fact, there necessarily must be credibility in the claims.

Read more here:

http://forensic-applications.com/radon/reviews.html

 

Radiation | Nuclear Radiation | Ionizing Radiation | Health Effects.

from World Nuclear Association – Updated January 2015

“Low-level radiation effects”

A lot of research has been undertaken on the effects of low-level radiation. The findings have failed to support the so-called linear no-threshold (LNT) hypothesis. This theory assumes that the demonstrated relationships between radiation dose and adverse effects at high levels of exposure also applies to low levels and provides the (deliberately conservative) basis of occupational health and other radiation protection standards.”

“Increasing evidence suggests that there may be a threshold between 100 and 700 mSv below which no harmful effects of radiation occur. However, this is not yet accepted by national or international radiation protection bodies as sufficiently well-proven to be taken into official standards. However, at low levels of exposure, the body’s natural mechanisms do repair radiation and other damage to cells soon after it occurs, and some adaptive response is stimulated which protects cells and tissues, as with exposure to other external agents at low levels. The ICRP recommends that the LNT model should be assumed for the purpose of optimising radiation protection practices, but that it should not be used for estimating the health effects of exposures to small radiation doses received by large numbers of people over long periods of time.”

“In addition, there is evidence of beneficial effect from low-level radiation (up to about 10 mSv/yr). This ‘radiation hormesis’ may be due to an adaptive response by the body’s cells, the same as that with other toxins at low doses. In the case of carcinogens such as ionizing radiation, the beneficial effect is seen both in lower incidence of cancer and in resistance to the effects of higher doses. This potential hormetic effect is most clearly evident in the data (see Appendix) for over 50,000 survivors of the Hiroshima bomb 1.5 to 3 km from the hypocenter, with dose range 1 to 100 mSv, compared with a large control group.”