Radon-222, W-99-08 Comments Clerk
Water Docket (MC-4101)
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
401 M Street NW
East Tower Basement
Washington, DC 20460

To Whom It May Concern:

RE: Proposed rule for radon in drinking water, published in the Federal Register on November 2, 1999 (64 FR 59246), W-99-08

Doctors for Disaster Preparedness (DDP) is a voluntary, nonprofit organization of physicians, scientists and other citizens dedicated to saving human lives through preparedness for hazards of all types, whether natural or man-caused. Dues and individual contributions support us; we receive no funding from any industry or government source.

We believe that scientific misinformation, particularly about technological hazards, is a serious problem, given our civilization's dependence upon science and technology and the specialized knowledge needed to evaluate policy questions about human health.

We devote considerable effort to risk assessment because misguided regulations not only divert needed resources from more productive uses but also can have severely detrimental unintended consequences on the health of the public.

We oppose the proposed rule because:

1. The weight of scientific evidence shows that radon in drinking water in the dosages encountered in the vast majority or American homes is not a hazard; rather, the scientific evidence indicates that it is probably beneficial to human health.

2. The EPA's calculations of risk are fatally flawed. American deaths from the proposed rule would far outweigh any potential benefit.

3. Adequate Congressional authority has not been granted to expand the agency's jurisdiction to this matter. The proposed standards are internally inconsistent. They can only lead to additional damage to public health because they will ultimately be discredited, they will further confuse the public, and they are an open invitation to unwarranted and harmful litigation by opportunistic lawyers.

1. Scientific Evidence Concerning Radon

The National Academy of Sciences report on the scientific evidence regarding the proposed limits on radon, entitled "Risk Assessment of Radon in Drinking Water," was issued in response to a directive from the United States Congress. From this report and other sources, we conclude:

The concentrations of radon ordinarily found in homes are NOT associated with ANY identifiable evidence of ACTUAL risk to human health.

The EPA's risk calculations are based on the disproven linear no-threshold hypothesis and on an extrapolation of underground miners' lung cancer risk. The miners were exposed to far higher concentrations and doses of radon than people living in homes. Extrapolation to the origin is akin to predicting that a certain small proportion of persons would die from ingesting a tiny fragment of an aspirin tablet because a person would die from taking a whole bottle of aspirin tablets at once. Multiplying a very small hypothetical risk by the total number of persons in a population can give an impressively large hypothetical number (say 20,000), even when the real number is far more likely to be zero.

The best actual data on the actual incidence of lung cancer deaths as a function of indoor radon exposure soundly and totally contradicts the EPA's extrapolated and hypothetical estimate. In fact, actual data show a statistically robust negative correlation between radon level and lung cancer. In other words, more radon in homes is associated with fewer lung cancer deaths.

The NAS report concludes: "All that can be said about domestic risk is that it is low and difficult, if not impossible, to detect.... "

The NAS report comments on the some of the data that contradicts the EPA's projections: "The ecologic study of Cohen (1995) is the most comprehensive. It encompasses about 300,000 radon measurements in 1,601 counties in the U.S. The trend of county lung cancer mortality with increasing home radon concentration is strikingly negative, even when attempts are made to adjust for smoking prevalence, and 54 socioeconomic factors.... This finding contradicts the existing risk estimates at low exposure...."

In other words, the EPA calculations purposely ignore real-life experience and data, which convincingly show that ordinary levels of residential radon are not harmful.

Cohen's data are the best available with very narrow error bars compared with underground miner and other data. Yet, Cohen's analysis is often discounted in hypothetical discussions because of the nature of the data, viz., they are based on studies of the radon exposure of large numbers of people with statistical correlation rather than on individual human exposures with hypothetical extrapolation.

A basic fallacy of the EPA extrapolations is the implicit assumption that the population of underground miners is not significantly different from the rest of the American population. As documented in some of the studies the EPA chose to use, the miners included a much higher proportion of smokers than the United States population, and were also exposed to much higher concentrations of dust and chemicals released in underground mining.

With a radon concentration in water of 1000 pCi/liter, the additional contribution to indoor radon would be 0.1 pCi/liter, one one-hundredth of the concentration found to decrease lung cancer risk. Therefore, any such small radon addition is likely to enhance health of Americans. This would be a benefit, not a risk.

If regulation is to be pursued despite the above, and an alternative maximum contaminant level (AMCL) in drinking water is still desired, an AMCL of 40,000 pCi/liter would be adequate and would probably decrease indoor radon lung cancer risk. The radon from such water would result in an incidence of lung cancer from indoor radon well below the incidence in homes having zero radon.

The discrepancy between real-life experience (including actual risk data) and the EPA's hypothetical extrapolations of risk is very large. In human health, we submit that actual, observed facts are vastly superior to the EPA's estimated hypotheticals. We find it much more appropriate to base public health measures on actual data than on hypothetical estimates.

2. The Proposed Regulations Would Kill Many More Americans Than They Would Save.

The EPA's hypothetical calculation of 168 cancer deaths per year due to radon in drinking water is based on faulty extrapolations only partially described above; in any event, no facts supports it. Because of the lack of factual basis, this estimate should be rejected as a basis for public health and regulation.

However, in 1997 dollars, according to EPA estimates, the cost of the proposed 300 pCi/liter standard would be over $400 million/year. Other estimates run more than 10 times higher. Several risk analysis studies conclude that resources expended wastefully cost human lives. These studies are based on the association of wealth with health, at individual, societal and civilizational levels. Given that any such spending would be wasteful, unnecessary deaths would be caused. Roughly, the waste of each $10 million per year causes one premature American death each year. In other words, the EPA proposes killing perhaps 40 to 400 Americans every year -- with no reasonable expectation of any benefit.

In other words, the EPA proposal would kill many Americans, for no good or acceptable reason. Estimated hypothetical risks are not acceptable reasons for such deaths.

3. The Proposed Regulation Would Expand the EPA's Authority Beyond Congressional and Constitutional Authority

The proposed alternative, the Multi-Media Mitigation (MMM) program, would expand authority beyond regulating content of water supplies to monitoring and "mitigating" indoor air quality in private homes. Even if authorized by Congress, it would run afoul of the 4th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which prohibits "unreasonable searches" of homes, including the bathrooms and plumbing.

Because the regulations would eventually be exposed as a harmful boondoggle, the proposal would likely inspire contempt for appropriate law and regulation.

Conclusion

If a drinking water standard for radon is to be adopted, it should be a consistent one and set at a level about one hundred times higher than proposed by the EPA. We propose this because the best, real, and actually observed data indicates that lower levels of radon are associated with an increased risk of lung cancer. Citizens should not be deprived of the benefit of a naturally occurring agent that protects against lung cancer.

Comments submitted by Robert J. Cihak, M.D.
Director, Doctors for disaster Preparedness