Science Group Disputes NYT Article

Dr. Richard E. Toohey, president of the Health Physics Society (HPS), wrote to the Times concerning data in the July 24 article, noting “there is something very odd” with one of the key measurements offered in the piece.
In the article – “What’s Lurking in Your Countertop?” – a homeowner became concerned after getting a high radiation count of 100 picocuries per liter (pCi/L) in her New York vacation home. The high-level reading convinced the homeowner to remove the kitchen’s granite countertops immediately, replacing them later with other granite tested for radon emissions.
Toohey, director of the Dose Reconstruction Programs at Oak Ridge Associated Universities in Oak Ridge, Tenn., noted that the “measurement process was not valid for the determination of ambient radon air concentration in the kitchen.”
HPS members went beyond the hypothetical-room examples of other recent radon studies by actually measuring various slabs of granite at a distributor. The slab readings, along with checks of background radiation levels, led the group to calculate the average kitchen ambient radon concentration at 0.13 pCi/L, less than one-thirtieth of the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s recommended limit of 4 pCi/L.
“This calculation is very conservative in that it assumes that there is no mixing of air between the kitchen and other rooms in the home,” Toohey wrote. “If air in the kitchen of the house flows easily into other rooms, then the radon concentration would likely be lower than the above calculation indicates.”
Toohey recommended anyone concerned about radon levels should have the living areas of their home tested, with the focus on ambient air levels. He recommended that, if action is needed, homeowners should mitigate radon concentrations throughout the house.
“The cost of such mitigation would likely be less than 10 percent of the cost of replacing kitchen countertops,” he wrote, “and would very likely result in a much greater overall risk reduction.”