The second leading cause of lung cancer is radon. My high schooler came home and said her science teacher said everyone should do a radon test. I scoffed, but humored her by getting a kit from Home Depot and sending it away to a lab. The results came back very high. So I purchased an electronic radon monitor and it showed almost the exact same results. Well, crap. I installed a radon mitigation system and now the numbers are almost nil.
The difficult thing for me is that while I believe radon can cause lung cancer, I think products are often sold based on fear. “Second leading cause” doesn’t really mean anything in isolation, does it?
What slice of my mortality pie was radon before and after spending $5000? Could I spend $5000 to cut a bigger slice out of it in another way, like eating better or hiring a grizzly bear to make me exercise more often?
I think action is better than decision paralysis, but I wish I could make much more informed decisions.
Radon gas is a pretty big thing in construction where I live since our underground is mainly boulder clay (which apparently has or leaks or whatever a lot of radon gas). Anyway, In Denmark a little over 5000 get lung cancer every year, and 300 of thouse are from radon gas. Acording to our Kræftens Bekæmpelse (anti-cancer NGO) there may be an additional 25% risk of radon causing lung cancer if you smoke.
Since around 2000, it's been part of building regulations that you gotta build air-gapped foundations in family homes. Those who can measure radon gas are adviced to buy things to fight it, and you can reduce it to basically 0% for little money.
I never really considered it from an advertisement perspective as it's adviced by our government and non-profit NGO's. So there is that, if that helps you.
> and you can reduce it to basically 0% for little money.
which is why I'm confused by people second questioning how bad it actually is in context of _fixing_ it (not in context of a national health scope)
if there is something which is known to be quite unhealthy in a non small degree, and there is a cheap fix why wouldn't you just fix it. In the end if it's very bad, or slightly less bad or the 10th leading cause instead or whatever doesn't matter, fixing it is affordable and it's guaranteed dangerous on long term exposure so you do it.
I found most people dont know about this or think about this until there is a home purchase and home inspection -- that is when it is revealed, and typically when it is remediated as part of the purchase contingencies. If youre living in the same home for a while, you wouldnt typically know. Also, if you are a renter, you probably wont know and the landlord will probably purposefully not want to test.
In my state, the state forces some of these tests (e.g., smoke detector) as part of the sales process so at least there is some hook for testing.
Is radon mitigation affordable, though? Someone in another subthread said they got quotes between $1600 and $3000. Even the low end of that is a difficult amount to spend for a lot of people in the US. If they're going to spend it (if they even can), they're going to want to know it's going to meaningfully decrease their risk of cancer.
I'm not saying it's not worth it -- that's the point, I don't know -- but I agree with people upthread that it would be nice to have better information with which to make decisions.
I don't know where you live but where I live in the Midwestern suburbs, $3k is on the low end for almost any significant home improvement/repair project except maybe repainting a room.
It might be significantly cheaper if installed in new buildings. Even if not, it barely moves the needle compared to the total cost of building a house, and it's almost nothing spread across the lifetime of a typical building.
For 93% of people the only cost is the $15 test kit to verify "yep, don't need to even think about it".
For the other 7% that then need to really do a cost-benefit the data is out there but you do need to go through your specific circumstances to get a meaningful number. The risk levels vary vastly (orders of magnitudes) between both the radon level and your life choices/situation, so it's relatively meaningless to share individual cost-benefit analyses.
> so it's relatively meaningless to share individual cost-benefit analyses.
yes
1. it's very affordable to fix
2. long term exposure always adds a non negligible risk
so just fix it
I'm confused why people get hung up on a cost-benefit analysis which is pretty much always guaranteed to be a net positive. Either slightly or majorly.
And if it's a rented apartment in many countries you can force your land lord to fix it with a wide arsenal of funny things you can do if they try to refuse :shrug:
What you quoted doesn't really agree with what you're stating, which is really "it's meaningful to share the cost-benefit analyses because they'll all say it's worth it".
The reason they will not all say it's worth it is because there is nothing "magical" that happens at 4.0 pCi/L. Whether that is the sensible threshold vs doing something else with your money is a very different answer for a non smoker who makes 35k/y vs a smoker who makes 250k/y.
Saw someone built his own DIY radon fan system. Think it was a clip from Swedish public service tv. He built it using 12V fans from server racks. Guess that is an option as well.
Advice also applies to mold. A lot of people worry about mold in their house. It's actually quite straightforward to determine if this is actually a problem: Home Depot sells "test kits" for a few bucks that are essentially petri dishes. Buy two of these, put one inside where you are worried and then the other outside and wait 3-4 days. If they look radically different, then send the inside one in for actual analysis, which is an additional ~$40 USD. Then and only then do you need to action and by that point you know exactly what the problem is so you don't have to pay some "expert" to sell you some massively expensive mitigation strategy that you probably don't need.
Is it common to have an invisible mould problem? Lots of people are in the situation where there is really visible mould but the problem is getting their landlord to fix it, without getting into allegations over drying clothes inside etc.
There's a lot of fear over things like black mold in the states. It's extremely rare but it can be life threatening, and it's one of those things that people see and get nervous about when they see that for instance their HVAC vent has mold spots, that they are breathing toxic air. 9 times out of 10, it's totally fine. This method mentioned above gives homeowners the peace of mind that they aren't poisoning their families accidentally for an extremely affordable price. The alternative of calling mold remediation experts in is going to be extremely pricey, and those people cannot be trusted to be upfront on whether your mold problem is 1. actually a problem and 2. actually dangerous - because they make money on selling expensive remediation solutions.
I would expect that mold can build up ie in ventilation where it remains unseen unless it literally clogs he whole system. You can't see the spores an often there is no strong foul smell.
honesty depending where you are such allegations might be very baseless & meaningless for many reasons like
- high base humidity of the place (e.g. the city where I live has a yearly avg. humidity of 70%, but specific to my apartment and ignoring the dry seasons over 80% is the norm (also for context not tropical but central EU, it's stuff like 20C+85% humidity). So airing out your room might increase air humidity...
- in small apartments it's the quite often norm that the side effect of taking a show can temporary rise humidity quite a bit, even if you ventilate properly. Most bathrooms in small appartments are just not well designed wrt. this (context I'm not speaking about long hot showers, but short normal warm showers).
- in small bed rooms night sweat can rise humidity by quite a lot, mostly if you are slightly sick but anyway
- just basic flowers can raise humidity, too
excluding dry areas IMHO for most no large apartments the landlord has forsaken any right to claim it's your fault if they don't provide reasonable measurements against humidity (even if it's just a half way decent (noise wise) air humidifier. Reason: Just standard normal expected usage will cause to high humidity level even if you do air out the apartment twice a day (which depending on weather conditions you might not even be able to do)
Sadly that isn't necessary the local laws/regulations POV.
Our local library system offers these to borrow for six-week spans (or whatever the length of the testing is). It’s a one-and-done deal and you’re good for as long as you stay in your home. Batteries included.
The EPA recommends home owners mitigate with radon levels of 4 pCi/L and above, and the EPA recommends home owners mitigate ”consider” mitigation at levels 2-4. Often you will see people post radon results in the 10+ or even 50+ range, which may lead you to think 4 pCi/L is not too bad, but in fact exposure to that level is the equivalent of 8 cigarettes a day or 200 chest X-rays/year.
Given the average level of radon in the air outdoors is 10% of that, being outdoors is 20 chest x-rays per year, eh? That’s almost a cigarette per day being outdoors!
One cigarette a day doesn't sound that bad for you. 40-a-day smokers exist and while they're unhealthy, they're not universally dying in their fifties, so one fortieth of that effect seems small.
The biggest risk of smoking one cigarette a day is not that it will give you cancer, it's that it will give you nicotine addiction which will lead to smoking twenty a day and getting cancer. Radon exposure doesn't have that effect.
Cancer isn’t the only risk though, the 100 other things are pretty bad too. It isn’t ‘just’ that you might die of cancer, it’s the decades of leg ulcers, stroke, heart and lung disease etc.
yes cancer is only one of the more deadly and more reliably attributable to cigarettes things
there are quite many things made much more likely with smoking which would end very deadly but modern medicine has learned to to move into the non deadly if treated in time area, which doesn't mean it it doesn't leaves you with long lasting side effects...
like most cases in my environment of smokers having "likely smoking caused" issues fall under that category (so far, aging/time tends to let you see more death in your environment and I'm not yet that old)
Those are some powerful claims, do you have any links for that? Generally 2-pack smokers that started early ie in their 20s or even earlier don't live till retirement where I live, but I agree its a small sample and generally such people don't live a healthy life overall.
and the more ways you add risk through your live the more likely you will die an early death
it's just basic statistics
and for the same reason you will find someone who does add all the risks but somehow still dies with 90+, if your sample size is large enough and factors complicated enough you are pretty much guaranteed to find some pretty big outliers
but realistically speaking it a pretty bad idea to assume you are such an outlier, but many people tend to ("basically") do exactly that (due to an combination of subconsciously avoiding reality and simply not thinking things through)
A couple of sources putting the life expectancy cost at 10-20 minutes per cigarette.
Smoking for 40 years that would be 5 months at 1 a day or 17 years at 40 a day.
I think that's all consistent with what you said: 2 packs a day and you usually, but by no means always, don't make it to retirement at ~66. Five months is enough that I'd take some care to avoid it, though.
It’s very region specific. Just like some regions don’t have many basements, some have a lot of radon:
Here in Maine about 36.5% of radon test results equal or exceed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) action level of 4 pCi/L, according to the Lung Association’s “State of Lung Cancer” report.
The indoor level of radon isn't going to be lower than outdoors. Indoors is either the same or higher than outdoors. Your level of exposure to radon will not go up by going outside. That's your background exposure level, and is already baked into the calculation of how much an effect an elevated exposure to radon in your home will have on you. Radon is a serious thing to consider, especially if your home has a basement. Radon mitigation is not a scam conspiracy.
Like any good scam, they take a legitimate issue for few and sell it to many who don’t need it.
These websites will try to tell you that the average indoor radon level is equivalent to 2.5 cigarettes per day or 66 chest X-rays per year. The EPA doesn’t make that claim though.
The EPA already publishes the direct risk levels for a given pCi/L reading. Adding an intermediate step of how many cigarettes per day that is akin to is not giving you any new information (but is likely distracting you from just thinking about the risk level itself).
This is bang on why you're best off to just always start by paying the $15 to do the test and then let that drive whether there will actually be a need to cost-benefit analysis around mitigation costs.
Scroll down to "Radon Risk If You Have Never Smoked". Looks pretty worthwhile to take it from
"very high" to "almost nil". If "very high" was in the range of the 2nd highest level listed here, that's 2% chance. That's for lifetime exposure but there's also multiple people living in the house.
If you DO smoke, the numbers look VERY good for spending some cash to get rid of radon. (Of course you should also stop smoking.)
That’s exactly the kind of information I was seeking! If your results come back at some ridiculous level, it could make complete sense.
But if your results come back much closer to normal background levels, there’s not much you can do. Even the EPA says it’s difficult to get it below 2.
Meanwhile, lots of websites out there try to scare you into buying remediation for low values (see comment below).
It’s the perfect bogeyman. Radon. Cancer. Invisible silent killer. And I think it’s demonstrated by the vibe-based “seems like a good idea” conclusions in these comments.
I think that if you start from the belief that radon mitigation is sold based on fear, and doesn't have value, then it's easy to cling to that belief and try to dismiss or explain away or minimize information that contradicts it, and to dismiss people who see value in it as 'fear buyers' who believe in a 'bogeyman' and say 'good idea' to things which, in your opinion, might not be good ideas.
A perspective perhaps different from yours: Avoidable cancer risk isn't great, and smart people* properly weighing the facts have repeatedly judged the value of radon mitigation to exceed the costs.
* - Probabilistically speaking, this includes many who are smarter than you and me
I never heard of the radon cancer impact before and it took me 10 minutes to find couple of representative studies done for my local region which in fact did find the positive correlation between the areas with elevated radon measurements and people living in those areas getting the lung cancer. So, not that "it could make complete sense" but it certainly makes sense. I suggest you do the same research before calling out something as important as this a scam.
$5000? I got a bunch of quotes and none came anywhere near that high and I live in a home that made it difficult to install the system (finished basement, large footprint, three stories tall, concrete outer walls (ICF), etc. I think the highest was $3,000 and the lowest $1,600. I ended up installing it myself for about $500 in materials.
I guess that depends how old you are when you install it and how long you plan to live but ~$7 per month is not at all an unrealistic electricity usage estimate for the system. 7*12*35 = $2,940.
Edit: E.g. the numbers from this site suggest, for 15 out of the 16 listed fan models, the lifetime electricity cost is likely to be significantly larger than the install cost unless you are already much older at the time you start using the system or you have extremely cheap electricity (or both) https://www.radonaway.com/radon-fan-operating-cost-calculato...
This point always amuses me. Thats like, 1 starbucks coffee a month, or 1 trip to a fast food place a month, or one extra thing at the grocery store a month, or half a movie ticket a month, or half a streaming service a month, or less than half an LLM subscription a month, I could go on for a while.
For the cost, preventing cancer seems like it's a wise investment. I say this as a cancer survivor.
It amuses me but maybe for the exact opposite reason: Phrase it to the median person as "for just a quarter per day" (queue sad music on a commercial) and we'll be worried about everything but the cost because it seems too low to think about. Say "For just 1 of less than 500 such choices you can afford to make in your lifetime" and suddenly we start wondering if it's something that makes the cut.
Of course that's median, most people on HN... probably should just get the system if the Radon levels are high.
But it doesn’t prevent cancer. It lowers the risk of a specific kind of cancer by some amount. Is it $650 worth? That’s what I’m stuck on. People just go by vibe and say things like “it’s a good investment” but that’s just coming from I don’t know where.
While your technically correct, you're practically wrong.
Literally, the CDC only mentions two primary sources of lung cancer: smoking and radon. Unless you have an unusual, alternative risk factor, it's practically correct to say eliminating smoking and radon prevent lung cancer.
How much does it really have to prevent one of the most painful and expensive forms of cancer, not just for you but also your family, to justify $7/mo? Not very much, in my book.
Same comment as the one above. There are literally infinite things you can do to reduce your risk of mortality. This would have to be among the best options if those things.
If you have a radon test indicating there's a problem, then it is no longer theoretical. There aren't an infinite number of pressing and known risks.
I think it's a mistake to conflate an infinite number of hypothetical risks with a definite and known risk. It leads to analysis paralysis and FUD. It is not possible to know what, among all of the infinite hypothetical options, is the best to reduce your mortality. So let's focus on the concrete steps we can take and that we do know are effective.
For most people, that is not radon mitigation, because most people don't have a radon problem. If you find out that it is a problem for you, and you have the cash to solve it - just solve it. It's that simple.
Some locales in the US require testing for radon then mitigating during any home sale. These regulations somewhat change the marginal cost/benefit analysis because the money must be spent eventually.
If you own a home in such a locale, you might as well do any mitigation while living in the house. Otherwise you're not getting any cancer risk reduction for your dollars but you'll still pay those same dollars for the mitigation when you sell the house.
We pay to live further from the toxic waste dump, the motorway or the pylons. We want filtered water. We want clean air. We pay to have nicer, less risky things.
How I look it is, if I’m aware of the risk and do nothing to mitigate it and then down the road one of my kids who sleeps in the basement develops cancer…
The present value of $7 in 35 years is $1.45, assuming a risk free rate of 4.5%. Paying $2940 over 35 years is much more affordable than paying $2940 up front. If the goal is to be rational about risk, let's right-size the numbers. Otherwise our figures will be misleading.
The time value of money is typically a more significant factor than inflation. If you believe that there will be massive inflation that outstrips the time value of money, then you should still feel this figure is misleading because it's too low.
I agree it's best to consider the capex/opex separately but I strongly disagree taking this approach will right-size the number. Here you're taking lifetime opex in nominal dollars but still devaluing it based on inflation anyways, which will not give you a meaningful result.
Radon fan drawing from two basement surfaces (concrete slab crawlspace addition and original stone foundation with cement floor): $1,200.00 usd in 2020 with warrantied fan and included confirmation test kit. US mid Atlantic. The prior homeowner thought radon was a scam too. It doesn’t make sense as a scam for a one-time capital and labor purchase.
> What slice of my mortality pie was radon before and after spending $5000?
You'll never know. The same way people in the exclusion zone will never know if their thyroid cancer was always destined to be or if it really was related to the Chernobyl meltdown.
But spending (closer to $1000) to mitigate some risk from a known threat vector does seem thrifty.
I might not be in as tight with the grizzlies, but $5k a year for a personal bear trainer seems a bit low. For a regular brown bear sure, but the grizzlies are expensive
> What slice of my mortality pie was radon before and after spending $5000? Could I spend $5000 to cut a bigger slice out of it in another way, like eating better or hiring a grizzly bear to make me exercise more often?
I wish more people thought like this. Every time I go to the GP I want to get a printout of my mortality pie based on everything they know about me.
I was actually thinking of getting one too. Is there a particular Grizzly-as-a-service offering that you recommend? I'm also considering signing up for Ostrich-as-a-service, and am really struggling with this decision.
My approach is to think carefully about exactly what I want to know, word the question that way, then throw it to the AI and pray. I think this is better than ignoring it or spending too much time on it.
Question: Where does radon related mortality rank versus other mortality factors in the United States?
<AI "reasons" a bit>
...
Summary: Radon in perspective
Category / Cause Approx. Deaths per Year (U.S.) Rank / Context
Toxic agents (inc. radon, pollutants) ~55,000 ~2.3% of all deaths (includes radon part)
So AI says it's a bit less than 1% of preventable deaths (or something) annually. Probably puts it in the top 150 causes or so. What you want to do with that hypothesis, or whether you want to spend time sanity checking it, is up to you. Hitting the gym to avoid heart disease is like 35 times more important. A radon home testing kit to eliminate uncertainty about this particular <1% risk is a one time cheap thing though.
I’d argue that the leading cause is actually genetics. I come from a long line of people who smoked like chimneys from their teens until their 90s, with no cancers. My mother has spent her life in harsh sun with no sunscreen, and looks like an old handbag, but has entirely clear skin - but her partner, who wears strong sunblock, hats, and all the rest, has had skin cancer twice. So have two of his kids.
Meanwhile, my father’s second wife’s family have pretty much all had or succumbed to lung cancer. None of them smoke, and unless they all coincidentally chose radon-riddled homes in different corners of the U.S., there’s no correlative environmental cause - which leaves genetics.
Is it genetics or probability distribution? If it is genetics, shouldn't the native american be the most immune to smoking? (genuinely asking if there is such a data)
> Although there are over 50 identifiable hereditary forms of cancer, less than 0.3% of the population are carriers of a cancer-related genetic mutation and these make up less than 3–10% of all cancer cases.[
Took me 5 seconds of research. But keep arguing. Opinions are more important than facts.
No, on the fact that there are plenty of known variants which increase the chance of lung cancer quite dramatically - moreso than smoking.
It’s not just lungs - things like FAP make your chance of getting colon cancer in your lifetime near to 100%, regardless of how many ginseng enemas you have or whatever the hell else you do.
Variants like TP53 (Li-Fraumeni) or EGFR mutations have measurable, population-level impacts on cancer risk.
Genetics loads the gun. Being alive then pulls the trigger.
> No, on the fact that there are plenty of known variants which increase the chance of lung cancer quite dramatically - moreso than smoking.
But didn't you just say that it is the genetics and not the radon and/or smoking? Can you give some examples of those "plenty of known variants" for lung cancer?
EGFR, as mentioned - it’s the most common cause of lung cancer in East Asian women.
TP53, as also mentioned - gives you a >90% chance of cancer of any variety in a lifetime. 50% by age 30.
Smoking presents about a 20% lifetime risk - and that’s without adjusting for genetic predispositions like CHRNA3/5 which increase nicotine addictiveness and promote tumorigenisis, or BRCA2, or CHEK2, which diminish DNA repair capabilities.
Quite strong claims. I would be interested to read more about those. Do you have any references you can point out? A quick research on EGFR and TP53 suggested they are more related to colorectal cancer and not the lung cancer.
I think Radon exposure is a serious matter, but its concentration in the USA either is probably overrated OR indeed you have a local geological problem. In Europe we even have the tradition of Radon Therapy for certain pathologies in Spa. Of course, one should do these therapies under medical consultation.
> How radon works: Cellular repair in the body is stimulated, the number of free radicals is reduced.
Yikes! Not only are free radicals increased, because you're being bombarded with ionizing radiation, but any cellular repair stimulated is because of the cellular damage done!*
I have to assume "the number of free radicals is reduced" is intentionally written awkwardly and in a passive voice, to avoid adding "...after the "radon therapy" stops.
Many physical therapies work on the principle of the stimulus and some net effects happen after that is stopped. Even fasting diets work like this according to specialists like Walter Longo: the best part happens when you stop the fasting and start eating again. You could argue something similar happens when you finish the certain exposure to radon after a trip to Bad Gastein.
The hormesis hypothesis has not been widely proven, but it has not disproved either. It's still a working hypothesis. And yes, patients sometime work with hypothesized therapies, especially if conventional therapies don't work for them or they get many adverse effects from them.
If I told you that hitting yourself in the dick with a hammer was good for you, would you have as much support and deference for The Schwanzhammertherapie Hypothesis as you do for hitting yourself all over with ionizing radiation? After all, I can't find any studies disproving it.
Here is how Schwanzhammertherapie works: 'cellular repair in the body is stimulated, the number of dick hammerings is reduced'.
Don't be silly by making the conversation ad absurdum. What is your working hypothesis for the "Schwanzhammertherapie Hypothesis"? :)
There's a big difference here between you, acting like a clown, and the scientists or clinicians of yesteryear that formulated the hormesis hypothesis.
> What is your working hypothesis for the "Schwanzhammertherapie Hypothesis"? :)
Thanks for asking! I explained this above: "cellular repair in the body is stimulated, the number of dick hammerings is reduced". To elaborate:
1. After being pummeled with [hammer|radiation], the body naturally tries to heal. The body is made of cells. Therefore: "cellular repair in the body is stimulated" in both therapies.
2. The number of [schwanzhammerings|free-radicals] during the therapy is N, and after the therapy is <N. Therefore: "the number of [schwanzhammerings|free-radicals] is reduced" in both therapies.
I think we can agree that both schwanzhammerings and free-radicals are bad, therefore reducing them is good. These two very similar therapies achieve that goal.
People with rheumatological diseases beg to differ. I understand nowadays it's a little bit odd, given the more sophisticated technological therapies that exist, but getting exposure to radon in certain calculated doses is how it was supposed to work.
Absolutely bunk science with no real evidence supporting. It’s like saying autism is created from vaccines.
A lot of the US has radon exposure. I don’t how people come out saying things like you do but at the end of the day it’s exposure to radiation. I have seen it all, people will say it only impacts children or the elderly. Or that it’s an overblown conspiracy. Radon is radioactive, I am sure there are discussions on safe exposure levels but mitigation is so inexpensive and normalized why risk it.
Nothing you have said in this thread has been supported by studies. Everything is a hypothesis or proposal. I would expect if this was real that there would be more concrete evidence over the decades, yet none exist. Maybe it’s not a falsified hypothesis but it’s at best a hypothesis. I am much more into the proven by a study science and medicine and not feelings.
Actually there are many (admittedly weak or low in n) studies in Europe, which show some benefit. I will post some titles later, check this space.
I agree that there are no big prospective studies and probably will never anymore be, because there is really no interest or gain from big pharma. The big time of physical therapies was last century and all studies, at least in Germany, stop by the 90s.
Please don’t I won’t read them. I already saw the overview ok Wikipedia. Some studies that may suggest hormesis, most of them flawed. Everything is either a proposal or hypothesis. Absolutely it should be studied but those radiation spas are bunk science for now.
Prove where is the flaw first. A small or old study is not necessarily flawed. The burden of proving they are flawed falls on you. And no, I care less that they have not been replicated because the community lacks interest. Nobody said the effect is miraculous or similar, to compete with modern medical applications, but certainly they are cheap methods that complement with other general wellness effects of spas.
The burden of proof is on the person making claims that goes against the various world organizations that claim otherwise. I agree the current models that deal with exposure are probably not accurate but again nobody has proven the beneficial claims you have stated. I tend to believe in the markets being efficient in the long run, if these spas were beneficial surely someone would have captured the data after multiple decades.
What are the various world organisations you are talking about? Because the German ones (among others) certainly have not found it harmful and have not banned it.
I told you many times, unfortunately, no one will do studies on these things anymore because there is no money it and it cannot be patented. That spas generally are beneficial, though, for general wellbeing and especially if combined with known thermal stimuli (such as sauna) is well known and there are several Finnish studies to prove it.
Last but not least, I have come across to many Americans who are generally doutbful of the medical indication of spas because there is little to no tradition overseas.
No world organization accepts radiation hormesis. Full stop. I am glad you find benefit and I am not suggesting it’s dangerous but I am also not accepting that it is beneficial.
This is not an American vs European thing please don’t make it. I am simply saying no governing body has accepted it beyond a study. Your view of the world is skewed if you think studies are not happening.
People have been questioning LNT, which is the accepted policy by most of the world including Europe. There is nuance and suggestive evidence that low dose is ok, after all humans evolved with background radiation. What is unclear is how beneficial it is and at what doses it becomes harmful. There is no clear study that shows benefit hence LNT being the adopted approach.
Bogoljudow VM (1988) The clinical aspectsof radon therapy. Y Phys Med Baln Med Klim (Sonderheft 1) 17: 59-66
Pratzel et al (1933) Wirksamkeitsnachweis von Radonbädern im Rahmen einer kurortmedizinischen Behandlung des cervicalen Schmerzsyndroms. Phys Rehab Kur Med 3: 76-82
And I found many more particularly from a certain Gunther R who has published a lot in Germany between the 70s and 90s with minor studies referenced. As said before, this is a dying tradition and no one cares to redo the experiments with better conditions, unfortunately. But until proven otherwise, it's all we have.
Thank you for proving my point. These are at best a hypothesis that no global body has approved. Is the LNT model overly strict? Probably. But is there strong evidence that low doses are beneficial? Nope.
No, you have proven my point. There is no strong evidence and IT WILL NEVER BE cause it's like trying to make a new study for a drug that has its patent expired. Are you willing to sponsor studies with your own money? Cause nobody else will.
Unfortunately, we are stuck with the little evidence there is from the last century when it was the heyday of balneological applications. However, these little studies we have, even with few patients is better than nothing and certainly there is also not enough proof that these patients have been harmed, if doing radon therapy according to modern standards of exposure.
As mentioned before: the linear extrapolation of the risk from high doses of radiation to low doses assumed by the LNT model greatly overestimates the risk of harm, and ignores the potential benefits. Low doses of radiation have been found to stimulate growth (Stebbing 1982), DNA repair (Kondo 1998a and 1998b), antioxidant action (Feinendegen 1987; Pollycove 1998), and immune response (Liu et al. 1987). Other studies have shown that cancer rates actually decrease in populations exposed to low levels of radiation beyond normal background radiation (Bogan 1998; Cohen 1995; Dissanayake 2005; Hattori 1997; Kondo 1993; Mifune 1992). The overestimation of risk by the LNT model is considered important by hormesis advocates, because its cautious perspective prevents patients from receiving low-level ionizing radiation treatments, such as radon, which might help them. Moreover, if radon levels were held to the standards mandated by the EPA and other agencies following the LNT model, the costs of residential radon abatement would be extraordinarily high (Macklis and Beresford 1991; Thomas and Goldsmith 1995).
If a placebo or nocebo is cheaper than a costly medical intervention, then it's good as that if not better. The problem is: you name it placebo although patients (for example with rheumatological diseases) have really responded to it, sometimes equally good to medications. And rheuma diseases are real debilitating diseases, a placebo would no work so easily. The mechanisms of action of radon baths are potentially many, and many have been already described: 1. Hormetic Effect (Low-Dose Radiation), 2. Anti-Inflammatory Effects, 3. Immune Modulation, 4. Analgesic Effects (Pain Relief), 5. Neuroendocrine Regulation.
Again: unfortunately there will never be studies with thousands of patients to prove this or disprove this, because there is no money to be made. So we stay with the little proof have 20th century studies in Europe with the limited patients evaluated.
What are you even ranting on about? There are multiple papers and work trying to question LNT every year. Despite what you think, not all research is fueled by patents. If you could prove that radiation therapy actually reduces cancer in populations that would be quite a prestige and also a lot of economic opportunity.
You keep sharing anecdotes but again none of them have been proven by science. I understand Germans have a love for homeopathy and some of it may work, similar to TCM but a lot of it does not.
What? Is gravity an unproven hypothesis, because Newton had the idea some centuries ago and now nobody bothers to prove it, because nobody expect it not to?
I have no stance on radon, but rejection studies solely because they're 30years old is dumb.
The only thing that is dumb is your argument. As I keep repeating myself. No governing body has accepted these therapies as valid. It’s at best a hypothesis. There are been no conclusive studies of the benefits. LNT is probably overly protective at low dose ranges but there is not conclusive evidence on low dosing being beneficial and especially at what doses it becomes harmful. Everything you read are anecdotes or studies that have holes in them. Who is questioning gravity???
"The second leading cause of lung cancer is radon"
Perhaps. I smoked for 30 years and I lived on and off in Devon for at least 15 years.
There is a bloody great pluton underneath Dartmoor in Devon and Bodmin in Cornwall and so on. Hence lots of lovely granite and radon and stuff.
This is the SW of England (UK). Radon emanates out of the earth and pools in cellars and the like and is a major health hazard. Ideally you know about the hazard and dissipate it. A simple fan will do the job.
I'm not sure it is the second leading cause of lung cancer. There are plenty of other pollutants to worry about.
I have a brick house and a basement, and I have no radon mitigation system, and I live in an area where radon is generally a concern (southeast Michigan.)
Over the last couple years I've had some AirThings sensors collecting data. Last month:
- The one-day average radon concentration detected by the basement sensor crossed over 3 pCi/L once... for a very brief period. Around 80% of the time, the one-day average radon concentration detected by the basement sensor was below 2 pCi/L.
- The one-day average radon concentration detected by the main floor sensor never reached 3 pCi/L and was rarely above 2 pCi/L.
In fact, since January, the main floor sensor has still never reached 3 pCi/L even once, or really gotten all that close. The basement sensor, on the other hand, has reached 4 pCi/L three times this year, with a peak at 5.1 pCi/L for a brief period in May.
I hardly ever check this data, but it is nice to have it. I guess it would probably be wise to double check some other way to make sure that the AirThings sensors are outputting good information, but I have little reason to doubt it.
As long as I'm interpreting the data right, though, it suggests that despite having some of the worst case scenarios for my house, actually it's fine. So I guess it really does depend mostly on the land you're built on. (That, and, you should probably just check instead of guessing.)
My understanding is that a radon reading of 2 is the upper bound for reasonable regular exposure. If you're seeing above that, I'd be inclined to look into mitigation.
I'm not an expert but I've read enough to know this is not a serious concern. If you were to see a reading above 2.6 pCi/L from a one-time test, that would be more concerning, but what I'm actually seeing is occasional jumps above 2.6 pCi/L that last less than a day from continuous monitoring. We're talking events that last on the order of hours for a few days a year... I can open a damn window. The vendor for my sensor recommends taking action if the level is above 4 pCi/L for an entire month, but for me it's barely above 2.6 pCi/L at all. In some months neither sensor ever gets above that.
I think on the contrary if you have a tendency to worry too much things like continuous monitoring systems might not be the best thing for your mental health. I actually was pretty worried since I'm a mild hypochondriac and a friend told me that they got obsessed with CO2 monitoring after getting one. Thankfully for me it has mostly been an occasional curiosity since there's nothing too concerning.
So what is the necessary levels of exposure to have some kind of long term implications? With hand wavy claims to drive fear that certainly will make a pump in radon kits + drive more radon mitigation systems.
I've always been under the impression that there was radon in basements since it settles down there ... maybe the correlation is people who spend long periods of time in the basement with radon exposure (thats a guess fwiw).
My daughter wanted to live in the basement area, so I had it tested for radon even though I guess radon is less common where I live. It came back negative, so I feel okay about it...man, the things you need to remember to think about in life.
It was Jimmy Carter days and the OPEC Oil crisis. Prior to 1973... electricity and heating oil was cheap, there were many single pane windows that didn't seal completely. So the default condition was houses as originally built, cooler temps in Winter and more natural ventilation in houses with corresponding higher energy costs.
In 1973 fears that heating in Winter would get more expensive, saw an increase in home renovation. IR viewers were employed for the first time and IR images showed windows and attic vents as glowing with heat (as they had all along) and it looked like money escaping. Rubber seals on doors and windows. Double pane windows.
This trapped the radon in basements (and for some rising out of the basement onto the first floor) to be breathed by humans and gain higher concentrations for the first time in US history. Homes were hermetically sealed.
Since smokers bore the penance of sin... the rise of the '2nd leading cause' went unrecognized for years.
Radon is measurable, my CO2 detector also mesures radon. There is none in my well-insulated house.
Now in a basement in Brittany things would be different, but for most houses in most places, radon is negligible.
There also isn't a notable difference in cancers between radon-rich granitic places like Brittany and the rest of France. I feel like at least in France, the potential dangers of radon are well known.
It always struck me as odd that radon in basements seems to be a big thing in North America, but is relatively un(der)reported of elsewhere. Is this just a matter of the US being too cautious? Is there perhaps more radon in basements over there? Or does the rest of the world not give a shit for some reason?
It depends on which type of ground you build on. The Nordics are mostly granite and have a relatively big problem with radon gas, or at least enough that people in general care about it. Continental Europe is dominated by limestome which hasn't got the same problem.
I expect that Americans spend more time in their basements than people in most other countries (other than Canada). The kind of furnished basement that teenagers hang out in from That 70's Show isn't common elsewhere.
Wrong and wrong. Not all parts of the world have issues with radon, depends on what’s in the ground underneath. Absolutely those countries do care and people are generally aware of it especially in the building process.
I don't know about "rest of the world", but I think in western Europe it is simply just another thing that gets inspected uneventfully, like making sure there is a fuse box.
This depends very much on the soil composition. Some areas might have almost no radon, whereas others do. Here's a high-level view of radon probably by county (WA state), but you can find local maps that show it at the neighborhood level. We looked at the maps when buying our house, had it tested, and radon levels were high so we installed a mitigation system in our garage (which is the bottom level of our house).
When I finally got to buy a home, we chose one built in the fourties because we really didn't like the feel of newer homes. Love it, but yeah, plenty drafty..erm I mean, fresh air. I do have to worry about lead paint though, which I found out with a cabinet remake.
This is also making things worse for houses with water damage and mold issues for the same reasons. The concentrations can rise rapidly as there is no dilution effect from leaks or open windows (most houses are always closed up in today's lifestyle).
I think a large contributor is poor indoor air quality - of all types, not just one specific pollutant - causing inflammation and thus cancer. Homes have gotten far tighter in recent years, and people buy ever more cheap furniture and inexpensive consumer products. So you have formaldehyde and other VOCs off-gassing, you have plasticizer vapors, nanoplastics in the air from synthetic furniture and cloth, you have refrigerants leaking from appliances and from insulation foam… I don’t think nearly anyone understands just how many unique poorly-studied chemicals are emitted into your indoor air by your average set of household products. That’s all to say nothing of common and better-understood air quality issues from gas cooking, radon, mold, etc.
So we have all these irritants in the air, and we have the most airtight homes in human history by orders of magnitude… what did we think was going to happen? That you could slap a laughably undersized carbon filter on an air purifier and call it good? Or that a limited number of too-small ERV systems would help? At some point we will need a radical rethinking of our approach to health and safety of new technology.
Houses weren’t so much better, but people are living in those houses longer (well, that’s true about all cancers). Perhaps one reason California life expectancy is better than other states is that they can mostly keep their windows open year round.
There is an entire article linked here, saying that they, Scientists, don't know what the causes are, even though they're actively trying to search for a cause.
Imagine if there was an environmental science forum that sat around pontificating with mistrust about software performance. Chances are people would mock it and marvel at their ignorance.
But here we have a forum of (largely) software developers looking at the experts on environmental health and going, "Why are they so stupid? It's obviously <radon> <modern junk> <etc>".
It's not limited to environmental health, it affects all kinds of articles on social sciences. Commentary full of people who aren't domain experts wondering why the domain experts are all so clueless because Mr Software Engineer has it all figured out.
Perhaps you are just a simple software developer, but there are plenty of people here who are genuine experts in every field imaginable: I have had intelligent discussions here with everyone from neuroscientists to microbiologists to carpenters to machinists.
More to your point, I think the modern idea that people must stay confined to their specialty is ridiculous. Not long ago it was common to have intelligent discussions - or do serious work - on topics where you had no formal education or experience. All of that occurred without the internet. Look at the early days of, for example, the Manhattan Project. Not a trivial undertaking, and yet many of the men did countless tasks where they had zero training or experience. Look at the history of any scientific field or large engineering project. For all of human history that is how it was: and now if you want to replace a toilet valve, or a lightswitch, or comment about a scientific topic, you must hire someone with the appropriate credentials.
Back to my point - as a matter of fact I do have a professional perspective on the question of indoor air pollutants. Perhaps not the credentials you seek, nevertheless: I develop consumer products for the home, and levels of indoor air pollutants are now high enough - due to precisely the causes I originally mentioned - that they are beginning to cause nasty interactions that destroy the products of my industry via fouling and corrosion. In fact, the professional associations for my industry have written extensively about the scale of the problem and several companies have invested significantly in R&D to identity solutions. In other words, the air we breathe is damaging the things around us; could it not damage our lungs as well? I do not make any absolute statements, but I think a serious discussion should be had and I see no reason that it shouldn’t also happen on HN.
I note that you picked two hard sciences as markers of respect, "neuroscientists and microbiologists", not social sciences.
Secondly my point I'm trying to make, is that these aren't "intelligent discussions" nor "serious discussion".
Shunning swathes of social science, often treating their conclusions as either illegitimate ( if they go counter to their preferred narrative ), or as obvious ( if they aren't ).
It's demeaning to "just ask questions" as if they hadn't been considered by the experts of the field.
I apologize for the rudeness, but did you even read my comment? I did not say a word about the social sciences. My comment was purely in reply to your accusation of ignorance.
So, first of all, trusting the NYT - or most major newspapers - on any article involving “science” is… somewhere between delusional and hilarious. They get things wrong at roughly the same frequency as a Facebook meme page.
Secondly: “Scientists” are not some monolithic group. On any subject you can imagine there are scientists claiming they know all, some claiming we know nothing, some with hypothesis A and some with B and some with Z.
Finally… I outlined a reasonable mechanism in my comment (indoor air pollutants increasing by orders of magnitude; home air tightness increasing by orders of magnitude; many of these pollutants are known to increase the risk of lung cancer.) Why not debate the argument itself, instead of making appeals to authority?
Yeah, this title for the article is really terrible. The "why" that scientists are investigating is not why many lung cancers aren't in nonsmokers. The "why" they are investigating is "why are these non smokers getting cancer?". Once smoking stops being such a dominant cause, you put more energy into the other cases.
I can’t find any complete numbers (most prevalent factors after smoking would be environmental, and therefore underreported, especially when as hard to detect as radon), but national health agencies tend to put the Radon section second, after Smoking [1,2]. An uncited figure on a Hopkins webpage suggests 30% of non-smoking lung cancer cases are caused by Radon [3]. Among the well-known environmental factors (asbestos, secondhand smoke), it seems to be about equal for risk increase [4]. Given that asbestos and secondhand smoke are on the decline, it stands to reason that radon will tend toward being the top cause, barring a rise in prevalence of one of the disease risk factors (asthma, pneumonia, HIV, tuberculosis).
Of course this is all moot because vaping will be revealed to be the current #1 cause of lung cancer in the coming decades, by a long shot. No citation necessary.
> Of course this is all moot because vaping will be revealed to be the current #1 cause of lung cancer in the coming decades, by a long shot. No citation necessary.
That isn't obvious or apparent to me at all so I do think a citation would be good to see. Nicotine is definitely a culprit in a lot of cardio-related issues for sure. I think some flavoring agents are the more questionable thing and would be curious to hear about those specifically in relation to lung cancers.
Fair enough. Cancer causation is just so weird, I'm going off the heuristic that stuff in your lungs that your lungs aren't prepared for is probably not great, especially with chronic exposure. And your lungs are really only prepared for air (which includes many things within certain tolerances [0]). The "not great" => "cancer" pipeline is really where the hand-waving comes in, and mostly far too early to tell whether the parts of vaping that are "not great" for your lungs will in fact be carcinogenic for your lungs.
So that being said, I'm mostly going to offer citations for "vaping is not great for your lungs." And that being said, I'm just going to offer citations for "specific parts of vaping are not good for your lungs." But my broader argument is that putting stuff in your lungs is going to be bad for your lungs, and these are just the most obvious ones we've found so far. Unfortunately I won't be able to find a citation for that argument.
So, first, the most recent: a study showing disposable vapes had incredibly high level of toxic metal emissions [1]. The non-disposable Juul et al variously have some concerning levels, but the insane numbers are on disposables, which are largely (entirely?) illegal in the US, at least. Still, they're not illegal everywhere, they were used heavily for several years in the US, and several of the top Google results were redditors complaining about the stupid ban and talking about how to get around it. All of this combines to lung damage down the line, and several of the toxic metals are outright carcinogenic, so lung cancer as well.
A more particular example: popcorn lung is a terrifying name, but pretty restricted risk, given the causing chemical is only in certain flavors, and those have supposedly stopped using it [2]. But again, an example of weird chemicals in your lungs cause weird things, and it'll be decades til we figure out all of them.
And finally, a study showing that vaping plus smoking leads to a four-fold higher risk of lung cancer over smoking alone (yes, they adjusted for age, gender, race, location of residence, prevalent comorbidities, and pack-years of smoking) [3].
[0] I was hoping to make a glib point about even high enough pollen concentration being bad for your lungs, but in fact a recent study suggests that allergies reduce risk of lung cancer! I'm chalking that up to allergies being your body's way of keeping non-air particulates from your lungs, but who knows. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/medicine/articles/10.33...
Except reducing the first cause does nothing about whether air pollution is a nontrivial factor. And nonsmoker cancers are a nontrivial proportion since they account for 10-25 percent of lung cancer worldwide, please just read the article.
Besides the base rate fallacy there is the fallacy of assuming only the biggest factor is what matters, when other factors are nontrivial weights already. Another fallacy is the fallacy of relativizing a problem framing by insisting on comparison with an obsolete problem --campaigns against smoking have done a lot, so why are we still comparing today's problems against the problems of the 20th century. It smacks of "well, things were even worse back then", which surely the base rate fallacy is not trying to suggest.
> And nonsmoker cancers are a nontrivial proportion since they account for 10-25 percent of lung cancer worldwide, please just read the article.
I read the article, but I can't tell if there's a real problem or not. Having "nonsmokers accounts for 10% - 25% of lung cancer worldwide" doesn't leave me any wiser or more informed. Maybe I missed it in the article, so the rest of my comment is pointless, but ...
What's the percentage of lung cancer in nonsmokers? 10% of the pop? 1%? 0.00001%? Whatever the answer is, why isn't it in the article? Then we can see what "10% - 25% of $BASE_RATE" actually is. If we're seeing "10%-25% of 0.0001%", then that sorta tracks as fine, TBH.
The article seems almost designed to mislead: What's the base rate of lung cancer in nonsmokers? What's the base rate of lung cancer in smokers?
For example, if the base rate of lung cancer in smokers is 25% and the base rate of lung cancer in nonsmokers is 0.1%, then I don't see a problem here; funds directed to eliminating the remaining causes of lung cancer will be better spent on other research.
OTOH, if the base rate of lung cancer in smokers is 25% and the base rate of lung cancer in nonsmokers is %15, then I see a real problem here: maybe we need to direct more research funds towards lung cancer[1].
My expectation is that, with smoking so rare, lung cancer in the combined population must be very low, compared with the time when smoking was not rare.
-----------------------------------
[1] Actually the problem is worse than that: if there was a singular cause for that 15% in my example, then we it would have been cheaper to target that cause instead of spending dollars reducing smoking.
I do wonder if non-smokers are segregated based on second hand exposure: have a parent/spouse who smokes. Casino employees may have to spend a full shift bathed in smoke.
Yes, also, the base rate of smoking in different groups is important to take into consideration to prevent the base rate fallacy.
Very few Chinese American women smoke (~2%), so if smokers and non-smokers have the same chance of getting lung cancer not caused by smoking, then the number of non-smokers with lung cancer will be a larger proportion.
If 100% of some group would be non-smokers, then obviously 100% of lung cancer cases in that group will be in non-smokers.
It's similar to misinterpreting the fact that most people that were hospitalized from Covid-19 were vaccinated.
Let's start with an extreme example: each day more people die in traffic accidents, than by falling from a 10-story building. But still, we all can agree that driving a car is safer than falling from a building.
Why? Because driving a car you get more chance to get to your destination safely than falling from a building. ChatGPT estimates 0.01% chance to die in car accident per year, when driving every day, and 90-99% to die when falling from a building, once.
However, since there are many millions of people who drive a car every day, multiplying very little chance to die in car crash by millions of people, we get thousands of traffic-related death per day. Compare that to single-digit number of people falling from buildings, even if all of them die from it.
Back to Covid, let's imagine a village with simple numbers like this:
10 people were NOT vaccinated,
100 people WERE vaccinated.
Of 10 people who were NOT vaccinated, all 10 got hospitalized.
Of 100 people who WERE vaccinated, 20 got hospitalized.
_Correct_ way to look at this village would be:
ALL people who were NOT vaccinated, got hospitalized - 100% hospitalization rate.
But among those who WERE vaccinated, only 20% got hospitalized.
Hence, it's better to be vaccinated - this way you'll get 80% chance of not being hospitalized :)
I'm not a real statistician, and don't have actual numbers on hand, but situation with real world numbers is similar: among people who were vaccinated, less percent were hospitalized than among those who were not. It's just that we had so many many vaccinated people, that their small hospitalization rate, when multiplied by total number of vaccinated people, outweighs number of not-vaccinated and hospitalized people.
Cool. I didn't know the effect of the vaccine is so poor, that you now need to account for statistical biases to see its effect at all. That's less than what i was told, and I'm not happy.
Honestly what a shit vaccine. Measles and Tetanus vax did better.
Cool, so your question was in bad faith, you were not at all prepared to learn, have wasted our time, and you still don't understand anything about the base rate fallacy.
You must be a liar or willfully ignorant to say that after the entirety of 2019-2021 happened. The efficacy of vaccines in general and specifically of the various Covid-19 vaccines have been talked about ad nauseam. No even merely scientifically literate person has said that the Covid-19 vaccines (or any vaccine for that matter) are 100% effective.
It's so weird how people will close their eyes for basic science to virtue signal to their group. I sincerely hope you open your mind and prevent your virtue signaling from killing you (or anyone you know) in the next pandemic.
> If i quote the WHO[1] on this, you might just say they are not literate enough.
This is a page primarily about herd immunity, not about vaccine efficacy. You had to dig to find this (or somebody dug for you).
Having said that, even though they added several sentences on how certain things are unsure or need more research, I will admit that they worded this specific sentence badly: "Vaccinated people are protected from getting the disease in question and passing on the pathogen, breaking any chains of transmission."
It is clearly overstated and does not match the careful wording later on: "We are still learning about immunity to COVID-19. Most people who are infected with COVID-19 develop an immune response within the first few weeks, but we don’t know how strong or lasting that immune response is, or how it differs for different people. There have also been reports of people infected with COVID-19 for a second time."
> The rest of your post are personal attacks that do not add to your point.
They do, because you clearly have a bone to pick that is preventing you from rationally approaching the matter and discussions in general. Think about what point you're actually trying to make and what that has to do with the base rate fallacy. Really, verbalize it. What is it? Why did you feel the need to inject that into the discussion, even though it doesn't belong here at all?
The WHO did not word it badly, it was the accepted knowledge back then.
You previously accused me of somehow missing the 2019-2021 timeframe, but that the vaccine doesn't really protect you well from infections was not established until autuum 2021. Consequently, as the scientific data to show it was not collected yet. Either you got the year numbers wrong or there is some retcon happening.
> Why did you feel the need to inject that into the discussion, even though it doesn't belong here at all?
Why is that on me? You tried a stab at antivax whackos and it backfired.
> Really, verbalize it.
I got vaccinated with the belief that it would reliably keep me from the hospital. Because it "prevents severe causes of the sickness" (translated from german). We blamed and shunned unvaccinated people because they were an unreasonable burden to the hospitals, and now you casually remark that its the low efficacy of the vaccine, not being unvaxxed, that causes the majority of people who end up hospitalized. For how long has that been?
Maybe we should have worked on a vaccine with better efficacy (hey, let me dream up the impossible, maybe immunity like with the measles vax where 99% ppl actually can't get sick at all) instead of harassing unvaccinated people?
> The WHO did not word it badly, it was the accepted knowledge back then.
Bullshit. I already showed how they were careful in the rest of their wording in your own source. 100% efficacy was never 'accepted knowledge'.
> Why is that on me? You tried a stab at antivax whackos and it backfired
Bullshit. The base rate fallacy was and is very present. The misinterpretation I referred to made sense to mention: It is a very commonly known recent and relatable example of the base rate fallacy. You made it a tribalistic ad hominem in your own head.
> you casually remark that its the low efficacy of the vaccine, not being unvaxxed, that causes the majority of people who end up hospitalized.
I did not say this at all and you still do not understand the base rate fallacy. A larger percentage of the unvaccinated people were hospitalized than of the vaccinated. There were just generally way more vaccinated people.
> Maybe we should have worked on a vaccine with better efficacy (hey, let me dream up the impossible, maybe immunity like with the measles vax where 99% ppl actually can't get sick at all) instead of harassing unvaccinated people?
See, now there we go. The mention of the Covid-19 vaccination triggered this frustration and made you decide to inject it where it did not belong and keep your mind closed to the math and science surrounding this. The math does not care about your feelings and is what it is. Accept it.
It’s difficult to give any accurate interpretation of, because it’s not a meaningful statistic.
For example, every person hospitalised from COVID-19 had consumed water at some point in preceding months. It’s not evidence that water causes severe complications from COVID-19.
> In and of itself own, as quoted by OP, it’s not meaningful.
This is an overly literal, pedantic, and ungenerous interpretation of what I said.
Clearly the actual numbers as well as the base rates for the relevant groups are necessary to meaningfully interpret the statistic, but I was hinting at a similar case after describing the logic for the original case, not exhaustively describing the similar case.
I love that the article mainly points out that it is unknown why asian women have an unusually high rate of lung cancer but the entire HN comment section (except for 1 thread) is just going on about radon.
Every time you look up something related to Radon, it's always cited as "the second leading cause of lung cancer after smoking"
I wonder if that's really true.
Radon is a big deal where I live. Most homes have a radon mitigation system which is a 20-watt fan that goes over your sump pump hole, and runs continuously to a vent on the roof.
I bought an Airthings radon monitor because of that stat, and one thing that I have learned is that those mitigation systems do not necessarily work. I have a system that works, but initially, even though my house had a system, it did not reliably keep the radon levels below the federal action level.
Barometric pressure, temperature, and HVAC all seem to have some bearing - tightening the house for air leaks actually did a lot of good in keeping levels low. Also, sump pump failures or ground water levels can "push" radon into the house. I dug a deeper sump pit and also put a secondary radon fan to pull air out of my sub-foundation drain pipes to ensure the air below the house is cycled.
Still, in Boulder County, my house will fail its radon test after a 2 hour power outage.
I am an evangelist for continuous radon monitoring, alerts and tests.
If too much air can leak in from too many places your exhaust fan won't be able to keep up and maintain a pressure differential across the whole area and fully cycle through the air volume. Instead of the air mass as a whole flowing towards the exhaust you will instead get mixing of inside and outside air and then pulling of a fraction of that. Ultimately failing to properly cycle the contaminated air and also spending a lot of energy on exhausting what was previously clean exterior air.
With it more sealed so you can get a decent static pressure it is like flushing a clean fluid through a pipe and only really needs a little more than the pipe's volume of fluid to clear it, with it poorly sealed it is more like scooping one cup of water out of a contaminated bucket, then pouring a clean cup of water back in and letting it mix before repeating the process, with the hopeful goal of eventually having an uncontaminated bucket of clean water. It would eventually be clean enough sure, but you might have to go through 1000x the fluid volume to get to a clean enough point.
Technically you could just increase your exhaust fan's power until it creates decent static pressure in even a leaky home, but you would also be exhausting a lot of the energy you put into your climate control system.
There's probably a tipping point between the stack effect (hot air rising and pulling on the radon) and drafts bringing in fresh air diluting the radon.
My house is a raised foundation and they covered all the ground underneath with plastic and put perforated pipes underneath that pull the air out. Radon went down 10x. The company has a 5 year guarantee.
I bought one of those because I have a couple radium clocks and a nice sample of uraninite, which is a tiny collection compared to the real enthusiasts but probably more radioactive stuff than the average person has. Radon is in the decay chain.
I've never seen above 0.7pC/L which is pretty good, although I don't know what proportion of the activity that is there is natural, or how much more it would be without the fan. I'm not sure what the natural radon levels even are in my area, I think the radon fan is just part of code here.
I bought a house in the hills of Los Angeles and we tested for radon. Turned out it was very high, and LA is one of the few places in California that has high radon. We got it mitigated, and it wasn't that expensive. I talked to neighbors and real estate agents, and no one wanted to know anything about it. I was shocked. Everyone is pulling the wool over their own eyes here.
Do you have a source for the high radon in LA? According to this county source it is pretty low in LA county but much more pronounced in Ventura county (1% homes with high levels vs 14%). I imagine there is some potential for accumulation effects but this is probably much worse in markets where the homes actually have basements.
I found a map at some point. It was 5 years ago. I'm in the San Fernando valley area myself. I do believe there were hotspots in the hills here but perhaps it was mostly ventura county. I'd have to find the map.
Drill a 6” hole through the concrete foundation and dig out about 15-20 gallons worth of material. Install a 3-4” PVC pipe into the hole (the end of the pipe should be a few inches below the bottom of the foundation) and seal the hole up with hydraulic cement. Continue the PVC pipe up out out of the house. There are lots of rules around distance of the outlet from windows and doors and how high above roof line. Inline install a radon fan. How big a fan you need depends on many factors like soil type, home dimensions, etc. The fan runs 24/7 creating a vacuum under the house.
Yes. I went into detail in another message in this thread. I neglected to mention that our garage is a slab foundation unlike the rest of the house so it involved drilling a hole and putting in a ventilation pipe into it, as others have mentioned.
I’m actually scheduled for an install next Monday. Mine has two components:
1. The ventilation isn’t really “in the house” - the fan pulls from below the slab (and exhausts outside) to prevent radon seeping through.
2. Based on the best guess about my home age/area and radon patterns in my house, the slab was probably poured around the furnace, so the mitigation will include disassembling/reassembling my furnace to seal underneath.
> Every time you look up something related to Radon, it's always cited as "the second leading cause of lung cancer after smoking"
> I wonder if that's really true.
That claim is in fact based on extremely poor research methodology. It is made by combining the linear no-threshold model of radiation damage (which contradicts everything we know about cellular repair and hormesis) with evidence from "case-control studies", a kind of retroactive hand-waving that has nothing whatsoever to do with a "controlled trial", despite the name.
I have never heard of radon as a domestic health concern (40+, have owned multiple houses). Does this vary by country or relate to mitigation industries in a locale?
Varies by geography, so yeah, by country as well. It's a major issue in the US as per the comments in this thread, but here in Australia, almost the entire country[0] has indoor radon levels at 5% or less of the concern threshold level[1]. A few people near certain industries may need to be concerned, but it's not the issue it is in the US.
If I recall correctly it can accumulate more readily in basements, so that's another factor. The house I grew up in had an exhaust system installed due to elevated radon levels.
Australia has the largest uranium reserves, but I've never heard radon mentioned here as a concern, so I assume it just comes down to the reserves being very specifically located.
>In 1990, ARPANSA conducted a nationwide survey of more than 3300 Australian homes to determine the radiation dose to the Australian population from exposure to natural background radiation, including radon. Based on this survey, the average concentration of radon in Australian homes is about 10 Bq m⁻³. This is less than in many other countries and compares to a global average indoor value of 40 Bq m⁻³. Average radon levels in Australian homes are only a little larger than the radon levels in outside air and are of minimal concern to health.
I can think of a few hypothesis, but I’d hit all the reasons we already know that people in their 30s are getting cancer first, like:
Natural gas burning inside with poor ventilation (solve by pushing electric everything, paid for by carbon tax paid by big oil)
ICE car exhaust (solve with EVs, subsidised by carbon tax paid by big oil)
Second hand smoke (ban smoking in public and within XX distance of a child, and make support for parents to quit free from cigarette taxes)
Microplastics in the water and the air including tyre dust (start regulating this/coming up with a long term plan to reduce it and filter it out, and put a government subsidy on certified and professionally installed under sink microplastic water filter products… paid for by those who put the plastic there in the first place)
Poor indoor air quality/high VOX (mandate air flow minimum levels for all new builds and make extraction fans for offices a normal requirement, and give tenants something to lobby against their body corporate to improve airflow in uselessly designed buildings since “sick building syndrome” is real but often impossible to know before you sign the papers)
These cause cancer after many decades so for example people who were 10 when this started becoming a big issue are now getting cancer in their 30s and 40s.
This is a professional medical opinion from scientists that was aired on the news recently in Australia.
Because smoking is down, and with it, smoking-related lung cancer. Nonsmoker lung cancer numbers OTOH remain steady and its percentage is therefore higher.
> Leah Phillips, of Pewee Valley, Ky. Doctors first mistakenly diagnosed her with asthma and then anxiety. Later, they said she had pneumonia. When an oncologist finally told her in 2019 that she had metastatic lung cancer, he gave her six to 12 months to live. “Go home and get your affairs in order,” Ms. Phillips remembered him saying. She was 43, and her children were 9, 13 and 14.
(One of many cases mentioned in the article.)
Before you head for the lab, to start researching "why" - maybe you should tighten up the standards for diagnosis and testing? That could enormously improve the qualities & quantities of life for a huge number of patients.
Not being a scientist of any kind, I fully believe it is fossil fuel emissions, mainly from autos.
When I was very young, where I lived, a city of 100000, I would say less than 50% of the people there drove plus most worked in the city they lived in. Now, almost every household has at least 2 autos and most drive at least 10+ (16km) miles to work.
But, I also wonder if this is tied to the general increase in cancers for people under 50.
Pollution was way worse in the past. Old pictures of american cities from 50 years ago look like Beijing. We hadn't yet offshored heavy industry by that point and like you said, a larger percent of the metro was living closer to it. And whatever you saw outside was actually better than your air quality inside where these pollutants would accumulate and mix with Dad's cigarette smoke.
This was the air you were breathing back then (1, 2, 3).
I know no one's ever going to change their ways cause of the increasingly evident ravages of climate change but I swear I feel like throwing rocks at the big SUVs rolling by with exactly one person in them during the heat domes here in NYC.
Just, so, gross.
And it truly is the _vast majority_ of cars going by with exactly one person in them. So wasteful, so much pollution, so hot... frustrating.
We really like our station wagon. Well, in principle at least. We won't get into the details of keeping a 12 year old German car going.
It's fuel efficient. It's not big. It's a decent people mover. It has more cargo space than many SUVs that are larger. Is low enough the roof racks are easily accessible. Added a hitch, mostly for more cargo space.
I'm starting to wonder if I've done more "truck things" than many of the people with trucks in the neighbourhood at this point. If I ever need to haul more, I'll just rent a truck/van for that moment in time. I'm not going to buy one to drive to the office.
When I had a Honda Fit I hauled a TON of cargo in it. A friend borrowed it to pick up a full-sized pinball machine from the next state over. I moved half of a 5-bedroom house (except for big furniture) across town in my Fit.
You don't need a gigantic beast. A kei truck is more than adequate for the vast majority of what people use pickup trucks for.
I love when people bring up the kei truck argument. If all you do is haul mulch around town from Home Depot, by yourself, and you already have another car, sure, go for it. But pretty much nobody owns a key truck as their only car. There's little crash safety, your knees are the crumple zone, they're not designed to go on 70 mile interstate highways, you usually can't transport many people. I would feel uncomfortable transporting friends/relatives more than a few miles on low speed roads in a kei truck, because they're 25+ year old designs focused on size rather than safety.
A kei truck is a supplementary vehicle at best... so you'd still want a car, and then you have two vehicles. Lots of people don't want two vehicles when a single vehicle that covers both use cases exists.
Sure, nobody needs a gigantic beast, but for people in lots of parts of the country, the downsides to owning a larger vehicle aren't that big. Why buy a smaller pickup truck when a full size truck is just a few thousand dollars more (in a country where the average new vehicle sells for $50k), gets similar fuel economy figures, and has more room in general?
Even my old Integra had a ton of trunk space when you fold down the seats. It was almost like a small pickup truck. I think a lot of people would get by with a sedan but it seems like the seats no longer fold down on a lot of smaller cars like that.
I get it. My wife drives a big SUV. She is a small lady, and says the car let's her see the road better and overall feel more safe.
Back when SUV's started to get popular, this was a trend they noticed as well. Back then, it was met with a lot of guffaws about yuppie housewives and all that. (This was before the term Karen had been coined)
I don't think you get it. And also this is an universal response from all women I ever talked about exactly this topic (and several guys too who had no idea about cars in general but knew about those famous football players or other celebrities who had suvs so they also needed one).
The root cause is plain and simple - your wife just needs to learn to drive better, then she wouldn't be scared regardless of her seating position. No amount of high position can compensate for overall crappy driving style and corresponding fear of driving and thus the 'need' for high SUVs. To keep her distance from car in front of her (which is basically why she feels the need to be sitting so high so she can anticipate braking earlier), and quick reflexes on the brake while 100% focusing on situation around her (which she should have anyway since there are other bad situations where higher positions doesn't give any advantage, in contrary).
I went the other way - very low-positioned bmws, with correspondingly much better and quicker handling, of course much lower consumption and much more rolling resistance. Its wagon so trunk space is massive and if not enough I can put on biggest Thule roof rack and still fit in our garage and low entry points like store garages (1.9m is the limit with it, never saw entry limiter lower than that). My wife learned to drive properly over time and has exactly same opinion, aka suv never ever because why.
Suvs and variants, at least those who don't go offroad (so most of them) should be reserved for physically challenged people due to easier entry/exit to/from vehicle. And that's about it for real objective advantages, the rest are just emotions which adults should manage to their advantage, not the opposite.
One thing I noticed as soon as I bought my large, offroady SUV (never having driven an SUV before) is that other traffic treated me much more respectfully. When I was in a compact sedan, traffic would swerve in front of me much more often, people would refuse to let me merge, drivers would ride my bumper, and so on. All of those things still happen, but much, much less frequently. For inattentive drivers, it's more difficult to ignore an SUV, and for angry drivers, it's more difficult to bully me around. And yeah, many of these bad drivers are in SUVs themselves, where it's easier to miss a nearby sedan.
Am I fixing the problem by driving an SUV myself? No, but I totally understand why people feel safer in them.
> The root cause is plain and simple - your wife just needs to learn to drive better, then she wouldn't be scared regardless of her seating position.
Correct, but unfortunately such arguments are like shouting into the wind. Bike helmets are the same. People just cannot be convinced that improving one's safety is 99% down to one's riding style and not a thin piece of padding on their head.
It doesn't matter how good a driver I, or your wife, or any woman, or any man is. That drunk driver who's also texting and just had a stroke and passed out from fentanyl could plow into you while you're innocently stopped at a stop light and you're being as defensive as possible. I don't see any way to change that calculus for the paranoid, unfortunately.
True, but false. Accidents that you can do nothing about are vanishingly rare. Even the situation you bring up is not one of them. When stopped/stopping you should be checking your mirrors to make sure the car behind you is at least slowing down.
On the other hand, the parent brings up a great example - following distance from the car in front. One of the most basic concepts of operating any vehicle and his wife is apparently incapable of applying it.
The overall point holds - people are irrationally worried about the 0.0000001% edge cases they can do nothing about anyway instead of trying to improve their chances in the 99.999999% of cases where it's their actions that matter.
It doesn't matter how rare the scenario is in reality, fear often isn't rational, but it makes us do things and we have no control over it. My point isn't that the fear is rational, it isn't. But unless you have a method to prevent people from assuaging their irrational fear by buying a certain vehicle, (or voting a certain way, for that matter), what is your proposal?
The method is obvious - adjusting the law so that such vehicles become way more expensive than the more reasonable ones. Don't ask me how to get that pushed through though.
But she's making everyone else less safe by driving in her tank-mobile. Those are much more deadly to pedestrians, cyclists, and those in smaller vehicles.
It's also an arms race where everyone buys bigger cars to see over all the other giant cars on the road. SUVs have been shown many times to be less safe, even for their drivers, but they give a feeling of safety which matters more than actual safety to buyers.
And for every comment screeching about pedestrians and rollover safety there's another one screeching about occupant safety. You can't really fault people for picking the one that benefits them when confronted with roughly equal screeching in both directions.
You absolutely can fault people for taking the choice that makes them safer at the expense of others' safety. I don't know how it became such a popular idea that a moral imperative is only valid if it carries no personal cost.
It may be small in the grand scheme of things but it is wrong to do this, in exactly the same way, but a much smaller degree, it is wrong to shove a child out of your way to escape a burning building.
Another commenter mentioned failing to design cars for women (totally fair! Volvo famously had a botched attempt at this)
What I have come to appreciate is how vulnerable women feel in the world. It is hard to appreciate how that plays into car choice if you are a man. Most men will never be able to understand, imo.
Only 20 years ago used to be the "hairdresser car" meant a tiny little sporty coupe or convertible like a miata. I guess the marketing changed and cultivated a new generation with a new mindset.
Why does designing cars for women mean we need to turn them into main battle tanks? That's a false dichotomy. Women in cars are just as vulnerable as men in cars, just as female pedestrians are just as vulnerable as male pedestrians.
For a while, women in cars were more vulnerable than men in cars, in part because crash test dummies were sized to typical male proportions, and cars are built to pass crash tests rather than be as safe as possible for all occupants while still passing crash tests. This sometimes led to things like airbags being placed in locations that worked great for average height men but not as well for average height women.
I don't know if it's fair to say that women in cars are just as vulnerable as men in cars, the same goes for the pedestrian argument.
It seems like you're using "women" as a proxy for "smaller people". Children and small-statured men are just vulnerable as women in crashes. Regardless, we now do crash tests with a variety of body types.
A 5-foot man is just as vulnerable when being hit by a car as a 5-foot woman, and obviously children are much more vulnerable than grown women when being hit by giant vehicles.
So, yet another case of cars not being designed for women (for those that don't get what I'm going on about - crash test dummies are modeled after men, leading to significantly worse crash outcomes for women [1])... it's infuriating.
Even a "small" BMW i3, a car one might think to be suitable for people of lower height - my wife tried out one at carsharing, and even despite the seat being all up front, she was barely able to drive the thing. The Mercedes Sprinter we rented for our last moves? Once she understood how the dimensions of that thing worked, absolutely easy going.
I'm curious about what the peak potential is and how close (or far) we are from there, because even if all things were 100% equal somehow, in a serious crash women will always fair significantly worse due to less musculature, lower bone density, thinner bones, and so on.
I think you got downvoted for this but unsure why cause that's a great point that making one subway car that gets used daily to transport thousands of people vs creating a car per individual driven only for an hour a day is absolutely huge in terms of carbon and resource cost
I think people underestimate the impact of air pollution because it's so easy to get desensitized to it. Try wearing a respirator with good seal and filter in an urban area for 10 minutes or so. When you take it off you'll probably smell vehicle exhaust you didn't notice before. Human sense of smell tends to tune out constant low level background odors, but they can still be a sign of something harmful.
I think you grossly underestimate the degree to which cars (and industry that we had yet to kick out to China) were dirtier decades ago than they are today.
We're talking like literal orders, plural, of magnitude when comparing between the generally no cats automotive fleet of the 70s with anything since the advent of both cats and computerized fuel injection. Any old timer can tell you of the smog that used to be frequent in urban areas. These days it's mostly gone, at least when California or Canada (depending on where you live) isn't on fire.
(INB4 people who are a net negative to public discourse construe this comment as some sort of endorsement for everyone driving everywhere all the time)
Just look at old photos of city smog in the 1960s. It is night and day different compared to air today even with larger populations in these same metros in some cases.
In more ways than one. A lot of "poor" countries have life expectancies comparable to the US. The big difference is they don't have a culture of every single person needing to own a car that spray carcinogens all over the place.
Obesity, which is its own massive wrecking ball, is also significantly lower in these "poor" countries.
The arrogance of laughing at poor people riding bikes to work when that would create a drastically healthier society.
Imagine if you had a 4km x 4km city with no consumer vehicles ( emergency and delivery exempt). Just walking paths and bike lanes. The people living there would be drastically healthier.
Or hell, it might just be luck. A lot of smokers live until there 80s enjoying a fat cigar once a day
It's honestly such awakening experience to see videos or visit these "poor" low GDP, stagnant economy countries and see their streets are full of happy, healthy people out walking, talking with each other. Kids out playing on the street, old people dancing in the parks. And then see our rich cities where everyone sits in traffic scoffing McDonalds raging out at other people doing the same. Huffing in diesel exhaust and tire microplastics.
Have to wonder what happened differently between countries like China, Japan, and India. I'm not an expert but yeah there is something more to it. Better managed government perhaps?
Indian society is a non-homogenous mix of thousands of different coherent factions, with different languages, clear ethnic/genetic differences, identities, etc. all vying for control.
Many groups have tried to conquer and unify India over the millennia (Mughals, various Hindu kings, the British), but they always lose steam/interest before they can finish the job.
It is (in modern times) also an environment where you’re not allowed to murder your neighbor (generally) or the other factions will gang up on you.
It’s the perfect environment for backstabbing, corruption, and performative changes without actual changes.
No one has ever successfully forced a coherent unifying identity on India - the British just papered over things, and as long as they got paid, rarely attempted to exert more low level control.
China, in contrast, had the Qin dynasty/Qin Shi Huang, which not only did unify China into a coherent ethnic-religious state, but also had periods of clear ‘murder anyone who didn’t fit in exactly as the emperor wanted’.
This resulted in 90%+ of China being from a single genetic group (Han Chinese), having the same religious background (or lack thereof), and being used to being steered from a single central gov’t control point (the central Court in Beijing). The CCP only temporarily diverged from the same historic pattern.
China has a lot of ‘local control’ diversity on the ground (Hokkien, Cantonese, Mandarin are very different languages for example, and say to day life in Southern China vs Eastern or Northern China is very different), but is very used to the central gov’t coming in and stomping everyone into the ground if anyone messes with things the central gov’t cares about. And everyone is generally going to agree they are all Chinese first, instead of say Shanghainese.
Still not a trivial thing to ‘steer’, but China is more steerable.
Japan, being a relatively small Island that isn’t in the middle of any major trading routes or the like, has had even more extreme levels of ‘be like how I say or else’ applied over time, also from a central gov’t/emperor/shogun, and has a far more extreme version of ‘be like everyone else’ than China. They’re even more ethnically consistent - 95% ish.
To the point they seem to ‘lock in’ to one mindset even at a really extreme level, then ‘flip’ more in lockstep.
Either xenophobia, or conquering, or chill, or whatever.
Modern cars should be equipped with a catalysator, making the majority of pollution to be Co2, worsening the global warming.
To some extent heavy metals are being distributed in the air by the wheels in heavily populated areas.
This can be greatly improved by limiting traffic in heavily populated areas. Trump removed such a rule from New York City recently for reasons I can not comprehend.
Many european cities have improved air quality successfully and hence increased life expectancy by limiting car traffic.
The majority of air pollution of particles however, is caused by the industry (the companies making those cars, among others).
In fact, you are a worse polluter of the earth today if you buy a new Tesla than if you kept driving your 1980s gasoline car due to the amount of pollution created by producing a single vehicle.
Particulate matter is still a huge problem, mainly produced by tires and break pads, but also road abrasion. In terms of pure engine exhaust, catalysts don't do much here, you'd need a particulate filter, which not all cars have. So, cars still a problem wrt cancer, as particulate matter is carcinogenic.
European cities were especially bad because the EU pushed diesels while having significantly less emissions controls than gas vehicles until the mid 2000s. Most of the vehicles impacted by ULEZ are those same diesels.
I'm not sure why this isn't recognized as a great success.
Once a large enough portion of the population were no longer smokers, it was inevitable that many lung cancers would be in smokers. What is important in all of this is not "large sounding numbers" of people, but the percentage of the population, as a whole, who suffer from lung cancer. And a further confounding factor life expectancy today vs even 30 years ago (the longer one lives, the more likely it is for cancer of any kind to develop).
Give it a few more years, vapes will boost those numbers again.
I wish I was joking. But I'm not. I'm seeing 12 year olds with vapes quite regularly. They're so addicted, taking sneaky hits on the bus or on the train. Even when smoking was cool back when I was a kid, I didn't know of anyone that young who was that addicted.
Vapes are ridiculous, theyre marketed in the UK as being incredibly safe. But they mess with my body so much whenever I’ve used them I just don’t believe it.
overlooked fact i point out is that the carbon monoxide in cigarette smoke makes you nauseas and puts an upper bound on your possible hourly intake of nicotine, whereas vapes dont contain the CO, and actually taste good enough to drink... you end up taking magnitudes more nicotine than the traditional route
No one said it did. It is however very addictive, causing addicts to smoke/vape more, thus increasing the load of the other toxic and carcinogenic substances.
Wikipedia does raise some concerning points about nicotine:
> Although nicotine is classified as a non-carcinogenic substance, it can still promote tumor growth and metastasis. It induces several processes that contribute to cancer progression, including cell cycle progression, epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition, migration, invasion, angiogenesis, and evasion of apoptosis.
I used to live by a busy street in a semi-dense part of town. Cars would be going around 45mph.
When I moved from that apartment after 4 years. I was shocked by the amount of black dust covering everything. from the walls to the shelves and floors. I think it was all tire pollution so switching to 100% electric won't mitigate.
It was pretty shocking and I wondered how much i increased my risk for lung cancer or other cancers.
Man, similar story. Spent a few months next to a mall parking lot with rough asphalt. Apparently the neighborhood had a car drifting crowd, and they'd regularly do so, which made me irrationally angry.
I only realized later that all the black dust everywhere must have been tire particles, when I realized other places DON'T have the black dust. Given the toxicity of tire pollution, it doesn't seem like my reaction was irrational after all. Sucks for all the people that still live there, who may not even realize what's going on.
I was just talking to my wife about playgrounds using shredded tires as the "mulch". I don't know where the rubber comes from, if and how it is cleaned, or what particulate material it carries, but it seems dubious at best.
It's banned for new installs in Europe and existing installations have to be replaced by 2031 [1] - although primarily to get rid of a microplastics emission source. Additionally, shredded tire rubber as infill is investigated for being contaminated with PAH (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) [2].
Personally, I more suspect vehicles. We got a grip on particulate emissions from diesel engines, but brakes and tires still emit fine dust particles. The average one way commute is 30 minutes in the US, so you're breathing in pretty filthy air for an hour a day...
This would be 'pretty easy' to demonstrate by comparing cancer rates by people who live adjacent to busy highways against those who live in rural areas. 'Pretty easy' is always nonsense in observational studies because the confounders have confounders that are confounded by other confounders; even more so for things that are relatively poorly understood, like cancer. But it's at least something that would certainly get (and probably already has been?) funded.
We got at least a link between heavy road traffic and stunted lung growth in children, as well as at least 10% increased lung cancer rates [1]. Additionally, noise from road traffic has been linked to increased rates of cardiovascular disease and mental health issues [2].
Both of this is compounded by the fact that people living next to major roads tend to be poorer, so there is a socio-economic issue present as well.
Hopefully not. I keep the windows up and recycle the air (which should be filtered on its way in anyway). I live a bit closer to road than I'd like considering the traffic levels though so even keeping windows open in the house could be an issue.
6PPD (N-(1,3-dimethylbutyl)-N′-phenyl-p-phenylenediamine)
•Purpose: Antioxidant to prevent rubber cracking.
•Danger: When it reacts with ozone and air, it forms 6PPD-quinone, a toxic compound shown to kill salmon and other aquatic life at trace levels.
•Status: Under increasing regulatory scrutiny (e.g., Washington State has started restricting it).
⸻
2. Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs)
•Purpose: Byproducts from extender oils and carbon black.
•Danger: Known carcinogens, mutagens, and endocrine disruptors. Persist in the environment and can leach from tire wear particles.
•Status: Regulated in the EU; linked to air and soil contamination.
⸻
3. Benzothiazoles (e.g., 2-mercaptobenzothiazole)
•Purpose: Vulcanization accelerators.
•Danger: Toxic to aquatic organisms, possibly carcinogenic, and bioaccumulative.
•Status: Found in tire leachate and considered a contaminant of emerging concern.
⸻
Nothing definitive about harm to human welfare yet, as far as I know.
"When tires wear on pavement, 6PPD is released. It reacts with ozone to become a different chemical, 6PPD-q, which can be extremely toxic — so much so that it has been linked to repeated fish kills in Washington state.... Testing by a British company, Emissions Analytics, found that a car's tires emit 1 trillion ultrafine particles per kilometer driven — from 5 to 9 pounds of rubber per internal combustion car per year....
a team of researchers, led by scientists at Washington State University and the University of Washington, who were trying to determine why coho salmon returning to Seattle-area creeks to spawn were dying in large numbers.... in 2020 they announced they'd found the culprit: 6PPD....
Tests by Emissions Analytics have found that tires produce up to 2,000 times as much particle pollution by mass as tailpipes."
My (wealthy) high school had a "turf" field which uses little rubber pellets as the "dirt". Those were probably shredded tires too. During football season you would see them tracked around the school, and if you were a football player or in the band they would show up at your house.
also, they would periodocially dump "more dirt" onto the field, once every year or so. Not sure if they vacuumed the old stuff up or just dumped more on top, but sometimes you would go out there and there would be a huge pile of rubber in the middle, which I guess got spread out later
Where I live during the Rugby and Soccer seasons it's not uncommon for the 'normal' pitches to be unplayable due to consistent periods of rain.
A number of schools, and public facilities, near me have switched to plastic pitches for this reason. I'm not advocating for them but there is a rationale.
BTW it's not just that being very muddy makes it difficult to play on but that using the pitch in that state trashes the grass.
The lungs are exposed to air, but they're also exposed to a lot of bloodborne compounds, since a full vascular cycle goes through the pulmonary arteries.
The null hypothesis is "it's something in the air", but with the increase in non-lung cancers in young people[1] noted over the past decade, it's entirely possible it's something else, and lung tissue is one of the susceptible ones to whatever it is.
This might actually be brake dust. In that case, the situation most likely will be improved by electric cars because they use their brakes far less often, decelerating with their motors.
Breaks are only part of the problem unfortunately.
> Resuspension of dust already on the road’s surface is the most significant contributor to non-exhaust PM by far, however these particles are difficult to characterize and manage because they could come from anywhere before landing on the road. Brakes are the next most significant source, and may also be particularly hazardous because of their small size and high metal content. Tires contribute the least, but they release large amounts of particles which act as microplastics in ecosystems.
I've heard that regenerative braking helps, but the relatively higher mass of an electric car (because of the battery) hurts. I wonder how it adds up in terms of brake dust produced.
My EV is around 25 % heavier than comparable ICE vehicles, but it only uses the disc brakes to stop the car from walking pace and hold it in place. I wouldn't be surprised if the amount of brake dust was less than 5 % of what my previous car emitted.
But then you have much more tire dust, since it rises rather exponentially and not linearly with mass of the vehicle. Overall more health-friendly but not as much as people(owners) like to think.
And it could be both tire dust and or brake dust are indicators of proximity to combustion engine exhaust. Any individual or combination of those could be an increased cancer risk. But only the dust is immediately visible and leaves behind a tangible trace
Yeah there's a lot of stuff comes off tyres, and EVs still have that. They also produce brake dust, although maybe less of it because of regenerative braking.
But they do have no tailpipe emissions, so they're still kicking out a lot less air pollution than a combustion-fuelled vehicle with not just the carbon dioxide but the myriad of pollutants which lower urban air quality so much.
Ultimately, a less dusty tyre would be a good thing, but the significant impact we can make now is to continue the EV transition knowing that like all solutions it's imperfect and we also need to use fewer vehicles and keep looking for better options.
I don't doubt a significant portion was tire and brake dust, but even gasoline and diesel can emit a significant amount of soot and unburned hydrocarbons.
Wok cooking is done at really high temp, which releases gases that are not present in moderate/low temp cooking. Woks trends asian, cooking trends towards women.
I don't think most people are actually doing really high temp wok cooking at home regardless of ethnic background. My impression is that, while woks are more common for home cooking in china (not chinese americans, mind you), even there home cooking is usually not done at the high temperatures that restaurants use.
It's easy, incredibly easy, to overheat cookingware unintentionally. Add oil to a pan/wok that's overheated and it decomposes. Additionally, if the cookingware is coated with Teflon, above 300 °C this degrades into toxic compounds and can lead to "teflon flu" [1].
You can buy nonstick wok-shaped pans but real woks that would be used for high temperature cooking are usually not nonstick. The original assertion that I was responding to was suggesting that the cause of the higher lung cancer rates in asian americans might be because of high temperature wok cooking.
I have no idea if nonstick pans are associated with higher lung cancer rates but even if they are I have no reason to think that asian americans are more likely to use nonstick pans, so the fact that it is easy to overheat nonstick pans in general might not explain asian americans having higher lung cancer rates.
It doesn't have to be super-high-temp wok cooking. Just using a wok and a normal residential gas stove is not great for you. Even at home stove temps stir frying can throw up a fair amount of oil aerosols. And it potentially means standing over the stove with the gas going on high, even if it's not going to get as hot as a restaurant wok. The gas is bad for you, the aerosols are probably bad for you. It's plausible Asian-Americans use this sort of cooking method more often than non-Asians.
>Studies have also shown that people who don’t smoke but have a family history of lung cancer, such as Ms. Chen and Ms. Liu — both of Ms. Liu’s grandfathers had the disease — are at increased risk. This could be because of shared genetics, a common environment or both, said Dr. Jae Kim, chief of thoracic surgery at City of Hope in Duarte, Calif.
The US fairly typically has electric stoves. Natural gas stoves are going to be the second most common form of cooking.
In the countries the OP is talking about, people cook over literal fires and fire pits (sometimes enclosed). Even when that happens in the US, unless you are talking about camping, you are likely talking about something like a well vented wood stove or wood stove oven like my grandma had.
This challenges our previous understanding of lung cancer risks, since we’ve always thought it mostly affected smokers. I’m curious how much is due to environmental pollution or other exposures, and how much is genetic. Hopefully, this will push for more research and better screening methods for everyone.
Not necessarily. Smoking has become less prevalent.
So while before, most lung cancer victims were smokers, we’re at the point where overall risk in the general population causes higher numbers than specific risk in smokers.
Because while most lung cancer victims were smokers, most smokers never got lung cancer.
Its not only lung cancer you can get, but others also have elevated risks. My uncle who smoked a pack a day never had any lung issues, but developed lymphatic node cancer in the groin area (and died from heart attack in his 50s, while both his parents lived till 80s in pretty good health but those never smoked).
Whatever the causes, be it cars, industry, certain classes of chemicals and particles, there will be a vicious fight about regulating them, since the ideological divisions are now drawn along the lines of anti-cancer and pro-cancer politics.
> The thinking used to be that smoking was “almost the only cause of lung cancer,” said Dr. Maria Teresa Landi, a senior investigator at the National Cancer Institute, which is part of the National Institutes of Health.
Well, that tells a lot: overfocusing on a single cause because it is obvious and major. Well, let us hope the medical science learns this lesson.
ETA: not that I blame them, it is a reasonable attitude but not so good in science.
Not jumping the paywall but I'd guess that because relatively nobody smokes cigarettes anymore, cases of lung cancer with other causes are now more of what doctors are seeing.
Did jump the paywall — and FTA, regardless, the question remains what causes these non-smoker lung cancers. Issues of environment and heredity are discussed.
Or perhaps cooking? Cooking can really spike AQI if ventilation is suboptimal.
Another potential explanation is cleaning products.
I think these are both far more likely than perfume, as there is a much stronger link between AQI and lung cancer than perfume and lung cancer (if there is any at all).
Professional chefs are largely not Asian women, and cook a lot more. Has there been a similar trend in them?
Cleaning products is a possibility.
Incense is another one --- those who burn incense may not consider it smoking, but any burning plant matter is going to emit similar products of combustion.
> Many Lung Cancers Are Now in Nonsmokers. Scientists Want to Know Why
Because hypocrisy does not live long. They blamed cigarettes for lung cancer, ignoring all other causes. "Oh, you have cancer but didn't smoke ? You surely were inhaling cigarettes smoke from somebody else.". We can polute further with no repercursions.
smokers thirds FYI:
- one third dies a direct smoking related death
- one third suffers from smoking related diseases then dies
- one third dies of something else, younger than the other two
They used to exaggerate the risks of cancer to smokers. Not many people get lung cancer at all, so 80% of them being smokers still doesn't represent that much risk for an individual smoker.
But like half of smokers ultimately end up with COPD, which can be like taking years to drown to death.
Non-paywall: https://archive.ph/nsMoH
The second leading cause of lung cancer is radon. My high schooler came home and said her science teacher said everyone should do a radon test. I scoffed, but humored her by getting a kit from Home Depot and sending it away to a lab. The results came back very high. So I purchased an electronic radon monitor and it showed almost the exact same results. Well, crap. I installed a radon mitigation system and now the numbers are almost nil.
The difficult thing for me is that while I believe radon can cause lung cancer, I think products are often sold based on fear. “Second leading cause” doesn’t really mean anything in isolation, does it?
What slice of my mortality pie was radon before and after spending $5000? Could I spend $5000 to cut a bigger slice out of it in another way, like eating better or hiring a grizzly bear to make me exercise more often?
I think action is better than decision paralysis, but I wish I could make much more informed decisions.
Radon gas is a pretty big thing in construction where I live since our underground is mainly boulder clay (which apparently has or leaks or whatever a lot of radon gas). Anyway, In Denmark a little over 5000 get lung cancer every year, and 300 of thouse are from radon gas. Acording to our Kræftens Bekæmpelse (anti-cancer NGO) there may be an additional 25% risk of radon causing lung cancer if you smoke.
Since around 2000, it's been part of building regulations that you gotta build air-gapped foundations in family homes. Those who can measure radon gas are adviced to buy things to fight it, and you can reduce it to basically 0% for little money.
I never really considered it from an advertisement perspective as it's adviced by our government and non-profit NGO's. So there is that, if that helps you.
> and you can reduce it to basically 0% for little money.
which is why I'm confused by people second questioning how bad it actually is in context of _fixing_ it (not in context of a national health scope)
if there is something which is known to be quite unhealthy in a non small degree, and there is a cheap fix why wouldn't you just fix it. In the end if it's very bad, or slightly less bad or the 10th leading cause instead or whatever doesn't matter, fixing it is affordable and it's guaranteed dangerous on long term exposure so you do it.
I found most people dont know about this or think about this until there is a home purchase and home inspection -- that is when it is revealed, and typically when it is remediated as part of the purchase contingencies. If youre living in the same home for a while, you wouldnt typically know. Also, if you are a renter, you probably wont know and the landlord will probably purposefully not want to test.
In my state, the state forces some of these tests (e.g., smoke detector) as part of the sales process so at least there is some hook for testing.
Is radon mitigation affordable, though? Someone in another subthread said they got quotes between $1600 and $3000. Even the low end of that is a difficult amount to spend for a lot of people in the US. If they're going to spend it (if they even can), they're going to want to know it's going to meaningfully decrease their risk of cancer.
I'm not saying it's not worth it -- that's the point, I don't know -- but I agree with people upthread that it would be nice to have better information with which to make decisions.
I don't know where you live but where I live in the Midwestern suburbs, $3k is on the low end for almost any significant home improvement/repair project except maybe repainting a room.
Midwest here. Radon mitigation usually starts at $1k. And can go up depending if they are drilling into the slab. For most cases it’s a trivial solve.
And those repairs often get put off years or until a house sale becomes dependent on the.
It might be significantly cheaper if installed in new buildings. Even if not, it barely moves the needle compared to the total cost of building a house, and it's almost nothing spread across the lifetime of a typical building.
Relatively cheap for people that own a house
For 93% of people the only cost is the $15 test kit to verify "yep, don't need to even think about it".
For the other 7% that then need to really do a cost-benefit the data is out there but you do need to go through your specific circumstances to get a meaningful number. The risk levels vary vastly (orders of magnitudes) between both the radon level and your life choices/situation, so it's relatively meaningless to share individual cost-benefit analyses.
> so it's relatively meaningless to share individual cost-benefit analyses.
yes
1. it's very affordable to fix
2. long term exposure always adds a non negligible risk
so just fix it
I'm confused why people get hung up on a cost-benefit analysis which is pretty much always guaranteed to be a net positive. Either slightly or majorly.
And if it's a rented apartment in many countries you can force your land lord to fix it with a wide arsenal of funny things you can do if they try to refuse :shrug:
What you quoted doesn't really agree with what you're stating, which is really "it's meaningful to share the cost-benefit analyses because they'll all say it's worth it".
The reason they will not all say it's worth it is because there is nothing "magical" that happens at 4.0 pCi/L. Whether that is the sensible threshold vs doing something else with your money is a very different answer for a non smoker who makes 35k/y vs a smoker who makes 250k/y.
Saw someone built his own DIY radon fan system. Think it was a clip from Swedish public service tv. He built it using 12V fans from server racks. Guess that is an option as well.
Why? Purpose built radon fans are not expensive and at most you have some pvc and fans.
Yeah, this is the correct heuristic.
Spend $15 or $100 for one or two measurements, *then* worry about cost to mitigate.
Advice also applies to mold. A lot of people worry about mold in their house. It's actually quite straightforward to determine if this is actually a problem: Home Depot sells "test kits" for a few bucks that are essentially petri dishes. Buy two of these, put one inside where you are worried and then the other outside and wait 3-4 days. If they look radically different, then send the inside one in for actual analysis, which is an additional ~$40 USD. Then and only then do you need to action and by that point you know exactly what the problem is so you don't have to pay some "expert" to sell you some massively expensive mitigation strategy that you probably don't need.
Is it common to have an invisible mould problem? Lots of people are in the situation where there is really visible mould but the problem is getting their landlord to fix it, without getting into allegations over drying clothes inside etc.
There's a lot of fear over things like black mold in the states. It's extremely rare but it can be life threatening, and it's one of those things that people see and get nervous about when they see that for instance their HVAC vent has mold spots, that they are breathing toxic air. 9 times out of 10, it's totally fine. This method mentioned above gives homeowners the peace of mind that they aren't poisoning their families accidentally for an extremely affordable price. The alternative of calling mold remediation experts in is going to be extremely pricey, and those people cannot be trusted to be upfront on whether your mold problem is 1. actually a problem and 2. actually dangerous - because they make money on selling expensive remediation solutions.
I would expect that mold can build up ie in ventilation where it remains unseen unless it literally clogs he whole system. You can't see the spores an often there is no strong foul smell.
honesty depending where you are such allegations might be very baseless & meaningless for many reasons like
- high base humidity of the place (e.g. the city where I live has a yearly avg. humidity of 70%, but specific to my apartment and ignoring the dry seasons over 80% is the norm (also for context not tropical but central EU, it's stuff like 20C+85% humidity). So airing out your room might increase air humidity...
- in small apartments it's the quite often norm that the side effect of taking a show can temporary rise humidity quite a bit, even if you ventilate properly. Most bathrooms in small appartments are just not well designed wrt. this (context I'm not speaking about long hot showers, but short normal warm showers).
- in small bed rooms night sweat can rise humidity by quite a lot, mostly if you are slightly sick but anyway
- just basic flowers can raise humidity, too
excluding dry areas IMHO for most no large apartments the landlord has forsaken any right to claim it's your fault if they don't provide reasonable measurements against humidity (even if it's just a half way decent (noise wise) air humidifier. Reason: Just standard normal expected usage will cause to high humidity level even if you do air out the apartment twice a day (which depending on weather conditions you might not even be able to do)
Sadly that isn't necessary the local laws/regulations POV.
Our local library system offers these to borrow for six-week spans (or whatever the length of the testing is). It’s a one-and-done deal and you’re good for as long as you stay in your home. Batteries included.
The EPA recommends home owners mitigate with radon levels of 4 pCi/L and above, and the EPA recommends home owners mitigate ”consider” mitigation at levels 2-4. Often you will see people post radon results in the 10+ or even 50+ range, which may lead you to think 4 pCi/L is not too bad, but in fact exposure to that level is the equivalent of 8 cigarettes a day or 200 chest X-rays/year.
Given the average level of radon in the air outdoors is 10% of that, being outdoors is 20 chest x-rays per year, eh? That’s almost a cigarette per day being outdoors!
https://www.epa.gov/radon/what-epas-action-level-radon-and-w...
The EPA doesn’t make such creative claims. But the sites that do will also conveniently sell you stuff.
https://radonbegone.com/what-does-your-radon-number-mean/
https://www.nationalradondefense.com/radon-information/radon...
One cigarette a day doesn't sound that bad for you. 40-a-day smokers exist and while they're unhealthy, they're not universally dying in their fifties, so one fortieth of that effect seems small.
The biggest risk of smoking one cigarette a day is not that it will give you cancer, it's that it will give you nicotine addiction which will lead to smoking twenty a day and getting cancer. Radon exposure doesn't have that effect.
Cancer isn’t the only risk though, the 100 other things are pretty bad too. It isn’t ‘just’ that you might die of cancer, it’s the decades of leg ulcers, stroke, heart and lung disease etc.
yes cancer is only one of the more deadly and more reliably attributable to cigarettes things
there are quite many things made much more likely with smoking which would end very deadly but modern medicine has learned to to move into the non deadly if treated in time area, which doesn't mean it it doesn't leaves you with long lasting side effects...
like most cases in my environment of smokers having "likely smoking caused" issues fall under that category (so far, aging/time tends to let you see more death in your environment and I'm not yet that old)
Those are some powerful claims, do you have any links for that? Generally 2-pack smokers that started early ie in their 20s or even earlier don't live till retirement where I live, but I agree its a small sample and generally such people don't live a healthy life overall.
> people don't live a healthy life overall.
to some degree that is exactly the thing
by smoking you add a risk
and the more ways you add risk through your live the more likely you will die an early death
it's just basic statistics
and for the same reason you will find someone who does add all the risks but somehow still dies with 90+, if your sample size is large enough and factors complicated enough you are pretty much guaranteed to find some pretty big outliers
but realistically speaking it a pretty bad idea to assume you are such an outlier, but many people tend to ("basically") do exactly that (due to an combination of subconsciously avoiding reality and simply not thinking things through)
A couple of sources putting the life expectancy cost at 10-20 minutes per cigarette.
Smoking for 40 years that would be 5 months at 1 a day or 17 years at 40 a day.
I think that's all consistent with what you said: 2 packs a day and you usually, but by no means always, don't make it to retirement at ~66. Five months is enough that I'd take some care to avoid it, though.
[0] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1117323/
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/dec/30/single-cigar...
It’s very region specific. Just like some regions don’t have many basements, some have a lot of radon:
https://www.lung.org/media/press-releases/maine-radon-2024If you own a basement in Maine, you should probably test it!
The indoor level of radon isn't going to be lower than outdoors. Indoors is either the same or higher than outdoors. Your level of exposure to radon will not go up by going outside. That's your background exposure level, and is already baked into the calculation of how much an effect an elevated exposure to radon in your home will have on you. Radon is a serious thing to consider, especially if your home has a basement. Radon mitigation is not a scam conspiracy.
Like any good scam, they take a legitimate issue for few and sell it to many who don’t need it.
These websites will try to tell you that the average indoor radon level is equivalent to 2.5 cigarettes per day or 66 chest X-rays per year. The EPA doesn’t make that claim though.
The EPA already publishes the direct risk levels for a given pCi/L reading. Adding an intermediate step of how many cigarettes per day that is akin to is not giving you any new information (but is likely distracting you from just thinking about the risk level itself).
Has anyone ever done a meaningful cost benefit analysis for less than $15?
This is bang on why you're best off to just always start by paying the $15 to do the test and then let that drive whether there will actually be a need to cost-benefit analysis around mitigation costs.
I'm with you on wanting to quantify.
https://www.epa.gov/radon/health-risk-radon
Scroll down to "Radon Risk If You Have Never Smoked". Looks pretty worthwhile to take it from "very high" to "almost nil". If "very high" was in the range of the 2nd highest level listed here, that's 2% chance. That's for lifetime exposure but there's also multiple people living in the house.
If you DO smoke, the numbers look VERY good for spending some cash to get rid of radon. (Of course you should also stop smoking.)
That’s exactly the kind of information I was seeking! If your results come back at some ridiculous level, it could make complete sense.
But if your results come back much closer to normal background levels, there’s not much you can do. Even the EPA says it’s difficult to get it below 2.
Meanwhile, lots of websites out there try to scare you into buying remediation for low values (see comment below).
It’s the perfect bogeyman. Radon. Cancer. Invisible silent killer. And I think it’s demonstrated by the vibe-based “seems like a good idea” conclusions in these comments.
I think that if you start from the belief that radon mitigation is sold based on fear, and doesn't have value, then it's easy to cling to that belief and try to dismiss or explain away or minimize information that contradicts it, and to dismiss people who see value in it as 'fear buyers' who believe in a 'bogeyman' and say 'good idea' to things which, in your opinion, might not be good ideas.
A perspective perhaps different from yours: Avoidable cancer risk isn't great, and smart people* properly weighing the facts have repeatedly judged the value of radon mitigation to exceed the costs.
* - Probabilistically speaking, this includes many who are smarter than you and me
I never heard of the radon cancer impact before and it took me 10 minutes to find couple of representative studies done for my local region which in fact did find the positive correlation between the areas with elevated radon measurements and people living in those areas getting the lung cancer. So, not that "it could make complete sense" but it certainly makes sense. I suggest you do the same research before calling out something as important as this a scam.
$5000? I got a bunch of quotes and none came anywhere near that high and I live in a home that made it difficult to install the system (finished basement, large footprint, three stories tall, concrete outer walls (ICF), etc. I think the highest was $3,000 and the lowest $1,600. I ended up installing it myself for about $500 in materials.
That's only the initial capex though. $5,000 is a realistic swag for install + lifetime electricity + minor system maintenance.
These fans are not using $3000 in electricity over their lifetime.
I guess that depends how old you are when you install it and how long you plan to live but ~$7 per month is not at all an unrealistic electricity usage estimate for the system. 7*12*35 = $2,940.
Edit: E.g. the numbers from this site suggest, for 15 out of the 16 listed fan models, the lifetime electricity cost is likely to be significantly larger than the install cost unless you are already much older at the time you start using the system or you have extremely cheap electricity (or both) https://www.radonaway.com/radon-fan-operating-cost-calculato...
This point always amuses me. Thats like, 1 starbucks coffee a month, or 1 trip to a fast food place a month, or one extra thing at the grocery store a month, or half a movie ticket a month, or half a streaming service a month, or less than half an LLM subscription a month, I could go on for a while.
For the cost, preventing cancer seems like it's a wise investment. I say this as a cancer survivor.
It amuses me but maybe for the exact opposite reason: Phrase it to the median person as "for just a quarter per day" (queue sad music on a commercial) and we'll be worried about everything but the cost because it seems too low to think about. Say "For just 1 of less than 500 such choices you can afford to make in your lifetime" and suddenly we start wondering if it's something that makes the cut.
Of course that's median, most people on HN... probably should just get the system if the Radon levels are high.
But it doesn’t prevent cancer. It lowers the risk of a specific kind of cancer by some amount. Is it $650 worth? That’s what I’m stuck on. People just go by vibe and say things like “it’s a good investment” but that’s just coming from I don’t know where.
While your technically correct, you're practically wrong.
Literally, the CDC only mentions two primary sources of lung cancer: smoking and radon. Unless you have an unusual, alternative risk factor, it's practically correct to say eliminating smoking and radon prevent lung cancer.
How much does it really have to prevent one of the most painful and expensive forms of cancer, not just for you but also your family, to justify $7/mo? Not very much, in my book.
Same comment as the one above. There are literally infinite things you can do to reduce your risk of mortality. This would have to be among the best options if those things.
If you have a radon test indicating there's a problem, then it is no longer theoretical. There aren't an infinite number of pressing and known risks.
I think it's a mistake to conflate an infinite number of hypothetical risks with a definite and known risk. It leads to analysis paralysis and FUD. It is not possible to know what, among all of the infinite hypothetical options, is the best to reduce your mortality. So let's focus on the concrete steps we can take and that we do know are effective.
For most people, that is not radon mitigation, because most people don't have a radon problem. If you find out that it is a problem for you, and you have the cash to solve it - just solve it. It's that simple.
Some locales in the US require testing for radon then mitigating during any home sale. These regulations somewhat change the marginal cost/benefit analysis because the money must be spent eventually.
If you own a home in such a locale, you might as well do any mitigation while living in the house. Otherwise you're not getting any cancer risk reduction for your dollars but you'll still pay those same dollars for the mitigation when you sell the house.
It’s a risk/reward. For a nominal cost, you essentially eliminate a gas that causes or accelerates lung cancer.
Enjoy one free beer a month, dude. Chances are you won’t develop a vicious cancer.
Aren’t we all doing this all the time?
We pay to live further from the toxic waste dump, the motorway or the pylons. We want filtered water. We want clean air. We pay to have nicer, less risky things.
I'm just saying, I'm happy to pay for our system at the cost of seven whole dollars in energy cost per month, for my spouse and kids if nothing else.
If in 20 years I find out I got ripped off, I won't really be upset about it.
How I look it is, if I’m aware of the risk and do nothing to mitigate it and then down the road one of my kids who sleeps in the basement develops cancer…
The present value of $7 in 35 years is $1.45, assuming a risk free rate of 4.5%. Paying $2940 over 35 years is much more affordable than paying $2940 up front. If the goal is to be rational about risk, let's right-size the numbers. Otherwise our figures will be misleading.
You're not going to spend a fixed price over time. You're going to consume a fixed amount of energy and pay an increasing rate as the dollar inflates.
Ideally we'd model all relevant parameters, my main point is that presenting the cost as $2940 is misleading.
And their point was that it’s not. The price of electricity typically grows to offset inflation.
The time value of money is typically a more significant factor than inflation. If you believe that there will be massive inflation that outstrips the time value of money, then you should still feel this figure is misleading because it's too low.
I agree it's best to consider the capex/opex separately but I strongly disagree taking this approach will right-size the number. Here you're taking lifetime opex in nominal dollars but still devaluing it based on inflation anyways, which will not give you a meaningful result.
That is still insanely high. The highest Ive seen for install is $650 but required quite a bit of piping to the exterior.
Just the materials cost was $500. How are they doing labor for $150?
And heating/cooling the fresh air replacing evacuated air + radon.
The air is under your slab. How would it be replaced by fresh air inside the house?
It’ll vary considerably. But I just picked a random round number that doesn’t affect the point I’m sharing.
Radon fan drawing from two basement surfaces (concrete slab crawlspace addition and original stone foundation with cement floor): $1,200.00 usd in 2020 with warrantied fan and included confirmation test kit. US mid Atlantic. The prior homeowner thought radon was a scam too. It doesn’t make sense as a scam for a one-time capital and labor purchase.
> What slice of my mortality pie was radon before and after spending $5000?
You'll never know. The same way people in the exclusion zone will never know if their thyroid cancer was always destined to be or if it really was related to the Chernobyl meltdown.
But spending (closer to $1000) to mitigate some risk from a known threat vector does seem thrifty.
> But spending (closer to $1000) to mitigate some risk from a known threat vector does seem thrifty.
No, there are a lot of known threat vectors.
I might not be in as tight with the grizzlies, but $5k a year for a personal bear trainer seems a bit low. For a regular brown bear sure, but the grizzlies are expensive
Yeah but no matter what, you gotta pay for the bear necessities.
Here is something I found comparing the risk of radon exposure to other risks. Seems like if you don't smoke the risks are much lower.
https://www.epa.gov/radon/health-risk-radon
> What slice of my mortality pie was radon before and after spending $5000? Could I spend $5000 to cut a bigger slice out of it in another way, like eating better or hiring a grizzly bear to make me exercise more often?
I wish more people thought like this. Every time I go to the GP I want to get a printout of my mortality pie based on everything they know about me.
I was actually thinking of getting one too. Is there a particular Grizzly-as-a-service offering that you recommend? I'm also considering signing up for Ostrich-as-a-service, and am really struggling with this decision.
I reckon grizzly bears have negative health side effects too... It's all a fine balancing act.
what's stopping you from getting answers for these questions?
My approach is to think carefully about exactly what I want to know, word the question that way, then throw it to the AI and pray. I think this is better than ignoring it or spending too much time on it.
Question: Where does radon related mortality rank versus other mortality factors in the United States?
<AI "reasons" a bit>
...
Summary: Radon in perspective
Category / Cause Approx. Deaths per Year (U.S.) Rank / Context
Heart disease ~680,000 #1 overall cause of death
Cancer (all causes) ~613,000 #2 overall cause
Chronic lower respiratory disease ~145,000 #5 overall (includes COPD, etc.)
Lung cancer due to radon ~20,000–21,000
Subset of cancer deaths; about 3–4%
Toxic agents (inc. radon, pollutants) ~55,000 ~2.3% of all deaths (includes radon part)
So AI says it's a bit less than 1% of preventable deaths (or something) annually. Probably puts it in the top 150 causes or so. What you want to do with that hypothesis, or whether you want to spend time sanity checking it, is up to you. Hitting the gym to avoid heart disease is like 35 times more important. A radon home testing kit to eliminate uncertainty about this particular <1% risk is a one time cheap thing though.
What the hell would someone downvote this for lol. Freaking Hacker News
Why bring up the AI at all, if you're also making those claims and vouching for that info?
Folks, check out your local library, ours has radon test devices.
Same (Canada).
I’d argue that the leading cause is actually genetics. I come from a long line of people who smoked like chimneys from their teens until their 90s, with no cancers. My mother has spent her life in harsh sun with no sunscreen, and looks like an old handbag, but has entirely clear skin - but her partner, who wears strong sunblock, hats, and all the rest, has had skin cancer twice. So have two of his kids.
Meanwhile, my father’s second wife’s family have pretty much all had or succumbed to lung cancer. None of them smoke, and unless they all coincidentally chose radon-riddled homes in different corners of the U.S., there’s no correlative environmental cause - which leaves genetics.
Is it genetics or probability distribution? If it is genetics, shouldn't the native american be the most immune to smoking? (genuinely asking if there is such a data)
> Although there are over 50 identifiable hereditary forms of cancer, less than 0.3% of the population are carriers of a cancer-related genetic mutation and these make up less than 3–10% of all cancer cases.[
Took me 5 seconds of research. But keep arguing. Opinions are more important than facts.
And you base your conclusion on top of the sample size of what, N=10?
No, on the fact that there are plenty of known variants which increase the chance of lung cancer quite dramatically - moreso than smoking.
It’s not just lungs - things like FAP make your chance of getting colon cancer in your lifetime near to 100%, regardless of how many ginseng enemas you have or whatever the hell else you do.
Variants like TP53 (Li-Fraumeni) or EGFR mutations have measurable, population-level impacts on cancer risk.
Genetics loads the gun. Being alive then pulls the trigger.
> No, on the fact that there are plenty of known variants which increase the chance of lung cancer quite dramatically - moreso than smoking.
But didn't you just say that it is the genetics and not the radon and/or smoking? Can you give some examples of those "plenty of known variants" for lung cancer?
EGFR, as mentioned - it’s the most common cause of lung cancer in East Asian women.
TP53, as also mentioned - gives you a >90% chance of cancer of any variety in a lifetime. 50% by age 30.
Smoking presents about a 20% lifetime risk - and that’s without adjusting for genetic predispositions like CHRNA3/5 which increase nicotine addictiveness and promote tumorigenisis, or BRCA2, or CHEK2, which diminish DNA repair capabilities.
Quite strong claims. I would be interested to read more about those. Do you have any references you can point out? A quick research on EGFR and TP53 suggested they are more related to colorectal cancer and not the lung cancer.
I think Radon exposure is a serious matter, but its concentration in the USA either is probably overrated OR indeed you have a local geological problem. In Europe we even have the tradition of Radon Therapy for certain pathologies in Spa. Of course, one should do these therapies under medical consultation.
https://www.alpentherme.com/en/therapy-health/therapy/radon-...
> How radon works: Cellular repair in the body is stimulated, the number of free radicals is reduced.
Yikes! Not only are free radicals increased, because you're being bombarded with ionizing radiation, but any cellular repair stimulated is because of the cellular damage done!*
I have to assume "the number of free radicals is reduced" is intentionally written awkwardly and in a passive voice, to avoid adding "...after the "radon therapy" stops.
* - And it's not gonna be a net positive!
Many physical therapies work on the principle of the stimulus and some net effects happen after that is stopped. Even fasting diets work like this according to specialists like Walter Longo: the best part happens when you stop the fasting and start eating again. You could argue something similar happens when you finish the certain exposure to radon after a trip to Bad Gastein.
> You could argue something similar happens when you finish the certain exposure to radon
I could, but then I'd be arguing something I don't believe, and have no evidence to support!
I don't know that it would be worth it to entertain a hypothesis that, as far as I can tell, nobody here believes and has evidence to support.
The hormesis hypothesis has not been widely proven, but it has not disproved either. It's still a working hypothesis. And yes, patients sometime work with hypothesized therapies, especially if conventional therapies don't work for them or they get many adverse effects from them.
If I told you that hitting yourself in the dick with a hammer was good for you, would you have as much support and deference for The Schwanzhammertherapie Hypothesis as you do for hitting yourself all over with ionizing radiation? After all, I can't find any studies disproving it.
Here is how Schwanzhammertherapie works: 'cellular repair in the body is stimulated, the number of dick hammerings is reduced'.
Don't be silly by making the conversation ad absurdum. What is your working hypothesis for the "Schwanzhammertherapie Hypothesis"? :)
There's a big difference here between you, acting like a clown, and the scientists or clinicians of yesteryear that formulated the hormesis hypothesis.
> What is your working hypothesis for the "Schwanzhammertherapie Hypothesis"? :)
Thanks for asking! I explained this above: "cellular repair in the body is stimulated, the number of dick hammerings is reduced". To elaborate:
1. After being pummeled with [hammer|radiation], the body naturally tries to heal. The body is made of cells. Therefore: "cellular repair in the body is stimulated" in both therapies.
2. The number of [schwanzhammerings|free-radicals] during the therapy is N, and after the therapy is <N. Therefore: "the number of [schwanzhammerings|free-radicals] is reduced" in both therapies.
I think we can agree that both schwanzhammerings and free-radicals are bad, therefore reducing them is good. These two very similar therapies achieve that goal.
[dead]
In the early 20th century America also used to have lots of radiation therapy providers. It's quackery, and harmful quackery at that.
Just because you have a tradition of something doesn't mean it's effective. Or safe. Or wise.
People with rheumatological diseases beg to differ. I understand nowadays it's a little bit odd, given the more sophisticated technological therapies that exist, but getting exposure to radon in certain calculated doses is how it was supposed to work.
I agree that the mechanism of "radiation hormesis" is kind of weak, but it has not been disproved as quackery either. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis
Absolutely bunk science with no real evidence supporting. It’s like saying autism is created from vaccines.
A lot of the US has radon exposure. I don’t how people come out saying things like you do but at the end of the day it’s exposure to radiation. I have seen it all, people will say it only impacts children or the elderly. Or that it’s an overblown conspiracy. Radon is radioactive, I am sure there are discussions on safe exposure levels but mitigation is so inexpensive and normalized why risk it.
Not on the same level as autism correlated to vaccines. And radiation hormesis has not been disproved as "bunk science" as far as it is widely known.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis
Nothing you have said in this thread has been supported by studies. Everything is a hypothesis or proposal. I would expect if this was real that there would be more concrete evidence over the decades, yet none exist. Maybe it’s not a falsified hypothesis but it’s at best a hypothesis. I am much more into the proven by a study science and medicine and not feelings.
Actually there are many (admittedly weak or low in n) studies in Europe, which show some benefit. I will post some titles later, check this space.
I agree that there are no big prospective studies and probably will never anymore be, because there is really no interest or gain from big pharma. The big time of physical therapies was last century and all studies, at least in Germany, stop by the 90s.
An interesting article to read about the different approaches in Europe and America is this: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.2203/dose-response.06-00...
Please don’t I won’t read them. I already saw the overview ok Wikipedia. Some studies that may suggest hormesis, most of them flawed. Everything is either a proposal or hypothesis. Absolutely it should be studied but those radiation spas are bunk science for now.
Prove where is the flaw first. A small or old study is not necessarily flawed. The burden of proving they are flawed falls on you. And no, I care less that they have not been replicated because the community lacks interest. Nobody said the effect is miraculous or similar, to compete with modern medical applications, but certainly they are cheap methods that complement with other general wellness effects of spas.
The burden of proof is on the person making claims that goes against the various world organizations that claim otherwise. I agree the current models that deal with exposure are probably not accurate but again nobody has proven the beneficial claims you have stated. I tend to believe in the markets being efficient in the long run, if these spas were beneficial surely someone would have captured the data after multiple decades.
What are the various world organisations you are talking about? Because the German ones (among others) certainly have not found it harmful and have not banned it.
I told you many times, unfortunately, no one will do studies on these things anymore because there is no money it and it cannot be patented. That spas generally are beneficial, though, for general wellbeing and especially if combined with known thermal stimuli (such as sauna) is well known and there are several Finnish studies to prove it.
Last but not least, I have come across to many Americans who are generally doutbful of the medical indication of spas because there is little to no tradition overseas.
No world organization accepts radiation hormesis. Full stop. I am glad you find benefit and I am not suggesting it’s dangerous but I am also not accepting that it is beneficial.
This is not an American vs European thing please don’t make it. I am simply saying no governing body has accepted it beyond a study. Your view of the world is skewed if you think studies are not happening.
People have been questioning LNT, which is the accepted policy by most of the world including Europe. There is nuance and suggestive evidence that low dose is ok, after all humans evolved with background radiation. What is unclear is how beneficial it is and at what doses it becomes harmful. There is no clear study that shows benefit hence LNT being the adopted approach.
Bogoljudow VM (1988) The clinical aspectsof radon therapy. Y Phys Med Baln Med Klim (Sonderheft 1) 17: 59-66
Pratzel et al (1933) Wirksamkeitsnachweis von Radonbädern im Rahmen einer kurortmedizinischen Behandlung des cervicalen Schmerzsyndroms. Phys Rehab Kur Med 3: 76-82
And I found many more particularly from a certain Gunther R who has published a lot in Germany between the 70s and 90s with minor studies referenced. As said before, this is a dying tradition and no one cares to redo the experiments with better conditions, unfortunately. But until proven otherwise, it's all we have.
Thank you for proving my point. These are at best a hypothesis that no global body has approved. Is the LNT model overly strict? Probably. But is there strong evidence that low doses are beneficial? Nope.
No, you have proven my point. There is no strong evidence and IT WILL NEVER BE cause it's like trying to make a new study for a drug that has its patent expired. Are you willing to sponsor studies with your own money? Cause nobody else will.
Unfortunately, we are stuck with the little evidence there is from the last century when it was the heyday of balneological applications. However, these little studies we have, even with few patients is better than nothing and certainly there is also not enough proof that these patients have been harmed, if doing radon therapy according to modern standards of exposure.
As mentioned before: the linear extrapolation of the risk from high doses of radiation to low doses assumed by the LNT model greatly overestimates the risk of harm, and ignores the potential benefits. Low doses of radiation have been found to stimulate growth (Stebbing 1982), DNA repair (Kondo 1998a and 1998b), antioxidant action (Feinendegen 1987; Pollycove 1998), and immune response (Liu et al. 1987). Other studies have shown that cancer rates actually decrease in populations exposed to low levels of radiation beyond normal background radiation (Bogan 1998; Cohen 1995; Dissanayake 2005; Hattori 1997; Kondo 1993; Mifune 1992). The overestimation of risk by the LNT model is considered important by hormesis advocates, because its cautious perspective prevents patients from receiving low-level ionizing radiation treatments, such as radon, which might help them. Moreover, if radon levels were held to the standards mandated by the EPA and other agencies following the LNT model, the costs of residential radon abatement would be extraordinarily high (Macklis and Beresford 1991; Thomas and Goldsmith 1995).
And yet it’s still all an unproven hypothesis. Glad you believe in it, placebos can be strong.
If a placebo or nocebo is cheaper than a costly medical intervention, then it's good as that if not better. The problem is: you name it placebo although patients (for example with rheumatological diseases) have really responded to it, sometimes equally good to medications. And rheuma diseases are real debilitating diseases, a placebo would no work so easily. The mechanisms of action of radon baths are potentially many, and many have been already described: 1. Hormetic Effect (Low-Dose Radiation), 2. Anti-Inflammatory Effects, 3. Immune Modulation, 4. Analgesic Effects (Pain Relief), 5. Neuroendocrine Regulation.
Again: unfortunately there will never be studies with thousands of patients to prove this or disprove this, because there is no money to be made. So we stay with the little proof have 20th century studies in Europe with the limited patients evaluated.
What are you even ranting on about? There are multiple papers and work trying to question LNT every year. Despite what you think, not all research is fueled by patents. If you could prove that radiation therapy actually reduces cancer in populations that would be quite a prestige and also a lot of economic opportunity.
You keep sharing anecdotes but again none of them have been proven by science. I understand Germans have a love for homeopathy and some of it may work, similar to TCM but a lot of it does not.
What? Is gravity an unproven hypothesis, because Newton had the idea some centuries ago and now nobody bothers to prove it, because nobody expect it not to?
I have no stance on radon, but rejection studies solely because they're 30years old is dumb.
The only thing that is dumb is your argument. As I keep repeating myself. No governing body has accepted these therapies as valid. It’s at best a hypothesis. There are been no conclusive studies of the benefits. LNT is probably overly protective at low dose ranges but there is not conclusive evidence on low dosing being beneficial and especially at what doses it becomes harmful. Everything you read are anecdotes or studies that have holes in them. Who is questioning gravity???
"The second leading cause of lung cancer is radon"
Perhaps. I smoked for 30 years and I lived on and off in Devon for at least 15 years.
There is a bloody great pluton underneath Dartmoor in Devon and Bodmin in Cornwall and so on. Hence lots of lovely granite and radon and stuff.
This is the SW of England (UK). Radon emanates out of the earth and pools in cellars and the like and is a major health hazard. Ideally you know about the hazard and dissipate it. A simple fan will do the job.
I'm not sure it is the second leading cause of lung cancer. There are plenty of other pollutants to worry about.
I am super uneducated on this, but I thought radon was only a concern for people with brick homes or basements?
It has more to do with the land you’re built on, though basements make it worse.
I have a brick house and a basement, and I have no radon mitigation system, and I live in an area where radon is generally a concern (southeast Michigan.)
Over the last couple years I've had some AirThings sensors collecting data. Last month:
- The one-day average radon concentration detected by the basement sensor crossed over 3 pCi/L once... for a very brief period. Around 80% of the time, the one-day average radon concentration detected by the basement sensor was below 2 pCi/L.
- The one-day average radon concentration detected by the main floor sensor never reached 3 pCi/L and was rarely above 2 pCi/L.
In fact, since January, the main floor sensor has still never reached 3 pCi/L even once, or really gotten all that close. The basement sensor, on the other hand, has reached 4 pCi/L three times this year, with a peak at 5.1 pCi/L for a brief period in May.
I hardly ever check this data, but it is nice to have it. I guess it would probably be wise to double check some other way to make sure that the AirThings sensors are outputting good information, but I have little reason to doubt it.
As long as I'm interpreting the data right, though, it suggests that despite having some of the worst case scenarios for my house, actually it's fine. So I guess it really does depend mostly on the land you're built on. (That, and, you should probably just check instead of guessing.)
My understanding is that a radon reading of 2 is the upper bound for reasonable regular exposure. If you're seeing above that, I'd be inclined to look into mitigation.
I'm not an expert but I've read enough to know this is not a serious concern. If you were to see a reading above 2.6 pCi/L from a one-time test, that would be more concerning, but what I'm actually seeing is occasional jumps above 2.6 pCi/L that last less than a day from continuous monitoring. We're talking events that last on the order of hours for a few days a year... I can open a damn window. The vendor for my sensor recommends taking action if the level is above 4 pCi/L for an entire month, but for me it's barely above 2.6 pCi/L at all. In some months neither sensor ever gets above that.
I think on the contrary if you have a tendency to worry too much things like continuous monitoring systems might not be the best thing for your mental health. I actually was pretty worried since I'm a mild hypochondriac and a friend told me that they got obsessed with CO2 monitoring after getting one. Thankfully for me it has mostly been an occasional curiosity since there's nothing too concerning.
So what is the necessary levels of exposure to have some kind of long term implications? With hand wavy claims to drive fear that certainly will make a pump in radon kits + drive more radon mitigation systems.
I've always been under the impression that there was radon in basements since it settles down there ... maybe the correlation is people who spend long periods of time in the basement with radon exposure (thats a guess fwiw).
Canada has a great website about radon:
https://www.canada.ca/radon
https://takeactiononradon.ca/
My daughter wanted to live in the basement area, so I had it tested for radon even though I guess radon is less common where I live. It came back negative, so I feel okay about it...man, the things you need to remember to think about in life.
What's a radon mitigation system like?
It was Jimmy Carter days and the OPEC Oil crisis. Prior to 1973... electricity and heating oil was cheap, there were many single pane windows that didn't seal completely. So the default condition was houses as originally built, cooler temps in Winter and more natural ventilation in houses with corresponding higher energy costs.
In 1973 fears that heating in Winter would get more expensive, saw an increase in home renovation. IR viewers were employed for the first time and IR images showed windows and attic vents as glowing with heat (as they had all along) and it looked like money escaping. Rubber seals on doors and windows. Double pane windows.
This trapped the radon in basements (and for some rising out of the basement onto the first floor) to be breathed by humans and gain higher concentrations for the first time in US history. Homes were hermetically sealed.
Since smokers bore the penance of sin... the rise of the '2nd leading cause' went unrecognized for years.
Radon is measurable, my CO2 detector also mesures radon. There is none in my well-insulated house.
Now in a basement in Brittany things would be different, but for most houses in most places, radon is negligible.
There also isn't a notable difference in cancers between radon-rich granitic places like Brittany and the rest of France. I feel like at least in France, the potential dangers of radon are well known.
And well communicated, I was surprised to have a full section about this when I changed home last year in Brest.
It always struck me as odd that radon in basements seems to be a big thing in North America, but is relatively un(der)reported of elsewhere. Is this just a matter of the US being too cautious? Is there perhaps more radon in basements over there? Or does the rest of the world not give a shit for some reason?
It depends on which type of ground you build on. The Nordics are mostly granite and have a relatively big problem with radon gas, or at least enough that people in general care about it. Continental Europe is dominated by limestome which hasn't got the same problem.
Makes sense, and would explain why it's pretty much unheard of in my neck of the woods.
I expect that Americans spend more time in their basements than people in most other countries (other than Canada). The kind of furnished basement that teenagers hang out in from That 70's Show isn't common elsewhere.
Wrong and wrong. Not all parts of the world have issues with radon, depends on what’s in the ground underneath. Absolutely those countries do care and people are generally aware of it especially in the building process.
Radon in houses is certainly a thing in Ireland where I grew up, it's somewhat rare though. I don't know anybody who has a basement.
Same in Denmark where I'm living now, I know nobody whose house has a basement.
Many houses in Denmark have basements. Radon depends on geology, and occurs in relatively high concentrations on the rocky island of Bornholm: https://www.sst.dk/da/Borger/Straaling_-miljoe-og-klima/Om-i...
I Denmark, Radon accounts for about 9% of lung cancer cases: https://www.sst.dk/da/Borger/Straaling_-miljoe-og-klima/Om-i...
i think that maybe peter schmeichel might have one?
I don't know about "rest of the world", but I think in western Europe it is simply just another thing that gets inspected uneventfully, like making sure there is a fuse box.
It's definitely a thing in parts of the UK - it's to do with what the ground is made of.
This depends very much on the soil composition. Some areas might have almost no radon, whereas others do. Here's a high-level view of radon probably by county (WA state), but you can find local maps that show it at the neighborhood level. We looked at the maps when buying our house, had it tested, and radon levels were high so we installed a mitigation system in our garage (which is the bottom level of our house).
https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2014-08/documents/wa...
When I finally got to buy a home, we chose one built in the fourties because we really didn't like the feel of newer homes. Love it, but yeah, plenty drafty..erm I mean, fresh air. I do have to worry about lead paint though, which I found out with a cabinet remake.
Seeing a toddler licking lead paint makes you shudder to think about it. Smart moms renovate before the kids are born and use peanut butter paint.
Luckily, all my kids are well past the toddler age, ha ha
This is also making things worse for houses with water damage and mold issues for the same reasons. The concentrations can rise rapidly as there is no dilution effect from leaks or open windows (most houses are always closed up in today's lifestyle).
Properly built houses should have a central ventilation system though.
I think a large contributor is poor indoor air quality - of all types, not just one specific pollutant - causing inflammation and thus cancer. Homes have gotten far tighter in recent years, and people buy ever more cheap furniture and inexpensive consumer products. So you have formaldehyde and other VOCs off-gassing, you have plasticizer vapors, nanoplastics in the air from synthetic furniture and cloth, you have refrigerants leaking from appliances and from insulation foam… I don’t think nearly anyone understands just how many unique poorly-studied chemicals are emitted into your indoor air by your average set of household products. That’s all to say nothing of common and better-understood air quality issues from gas cooking, radon, mold, etc.
So we have all these irritants in the air, and we have the most airtight homes in human history by orders of magnitude… what did we think was going to happen? That you could slap a laughably undersized carbon filter on an air purifier and call it good? Or that a limited number of too-small ERV systems would help? At some point we will need a radical rethinking of our approach to health and safety of new technology.
Houses weren’t so much better, but people are living in those houses longer (well, that’s true about all cancers). Perhaps one reason California life expectancy is better than other states is that they can mostly keep their windows open year round.
Why do you think this?
There is an entire article linked here, saying that they, Scientists, don't know what the causes are, even though they're actively trying to search for a cause.
HN can be infuriating sometimes.
Imagine if there was an environmental science forum that sat around pontificating with mistrust about software performance. Chances are people would mock it and marvel at their ignorance.
But here we have a forum of (largely) software developers looking at the experts on environmental health and going, "Why are they so stupid? It's obviously <radon> <modern junk> <etc>".
It's not limited to environmental health, it affects all kinds of articles on social sciences. Commentary full of people who aren't domain experts wondering why the domain experts are all so clueless because Mr Software Engineer has it all figured out.
Perhaps you are just a simple software developer, but there are plenty of people here who are genuine experts in every field imaginable: I have had intelligent discussions here with everyone from neuroscientists to microbiologists to carpenters to machinists.
More to your point, I think the modern idea that people must stay confined to their specialty is ridiculous. Not long ago it was common to have intelligent discussions - or do serious work - on topics where you had no formal education or experience. All of that occurred without the internet. Look at the early days of, for example, the Manhattan Project. Not a trivial undertaking, and yet many of the men did countless tasks where they had zero training or experience. Look at the history of any scientific field or large engineering project. For all of human history that is how it was: and now if you want to replace a toilet valve, or a lightswitch, or comment about a scientific topic, you must hire someone with the appropriate credentials.
Back to my point - as a matter of fact I do have a professional perspective on the question of indoor air pollutants. Perhaps not the credentials you seek, nevertheless: I develop consumer products for the home, and levels of indoor air pollutants are now high enough - due to precisely the causes I originally mentioned - that they are beginning to cause nasty interactions that destroy the products of my industry via fouling and corrosion. In fact, the professional associations for my industry have written extensively about the scale of the problem and several companies have invested significantly in R&D to identity solutions. In other words, the air we breathe is damaging the things around us; could it not damage our lungs as well? I do not make any absolute statements, but I think a serious discussion should be had and I see no reason that it shouldn’t also happen on HN.
I note that you picked two hard sciences as markers of respect, "neuroscientists and microbiologists", not social sciences.
Secondly my point I'm trying to make, is that these aren't "intelligent discussions" nor "serious discussion".
Shunning swathes of social science, often treating their conclusions as either illegitimate ( if they go counter to their preferred narrative ), or as obvious ( if they aren't ).
It's demeaning to "just ask questions" as if they hadn't been considered by the experts of the field.
I apologize for the rudeness, but did you even read my comment? I did not say a word about the social sciences. My comment was purely in reply to your accusation of ignorance.
So, first of all, trusting the NYT - or most major newspapers - on any article involving “science” is… somewhere between delusional and hilarious. They get things wrong at roughly the same frequency as a Facebook meme page.
Secondly: “Scientists” are not some monolithic group. On any subject you can imagine there are scientists claiming they know all, some claiming we know nothing, some with hypothesis A and some with B and some with Z.
Finally… I outlined a reasonable mechanism in my comment (indoor air pollutants increasing by orders of magnitude; home air tightness increasing by orders of magnitude; many of these pollutants are known to increase the risk of lung cancer.) Why not debate the argument itself, instead of making appeals to authority?
Are lung cancer rates up? Obviously eliminating or reducing the primary cause will lead to larger percentages of the other causes among cases.
Yeah, this title for the article is really terrible. The "why" that scientists are investigating is not why many lung cancers aren't in nonsmokers. The "why" they are investigating is "why are these non smokers getting cancer?". Once smoking stops being such a dominant cause, you put more energy into the other cases.
It would be radon, wouldn’t it?
... well that is irrational
I can’t find any complete numbers (most prevalent factors after smoking would be environmental, and therefore underreported, especially when as hard to detect as radon), but national health agencies tend to put the Radon section second, after Smoking [1,2]. An uncited figure on a Hopkins webpage suggests 30% of non-smoking lung cancer cases are caused by Radon [3]. Among the well-known environmental factors (asbestos, secondhand smoke), it seems to be about equal for risk increase [4]. Given that asbestos and secondhand smoke are on the decline, it stands to reason that radon will tend toward being the top cause, barring a rise in prevalence of one of the disease risk factors (asthma, pneumonia, HIV, tuberculosis).
Of course this is all moot because vaping will be revealed to be the current #1 cause of lung cancer in the coming decades, by a long shot. No citation necessary.
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/lung-cancer/risk-factors/index.html
[2] https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/lung-cancer/causes/
[3] https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseas...
[4] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6777859/
> Of course this is all moot because vaping will be revealed to be the current #1 cause of lung cancer in the coming decades, by a long shot. No citation necessary.
That isn't obvious or apparent to me at all so I do think a citation would be good to see. Nicotine is definitely a culprit in a lot of cardio-related issues for sure. I think some flavoring agents are the more questionable thing and would be curious to hear about those specifically in relation to lung cancers.
Fair enough. Cancer causation is just so weird, I'm going off the heuristic that stuff in your lungs that your lungs aren't prepared for is probably not great, especially with chronic exposure. And your lungs are really only prepared for air (which includes many things within certain tolerances [0]). The "not great" => "cancer" pipeline is really where the hand-waving comes in, and mostly far too early to tell whether the parts of vaping that are "not great" for your lungs will in fact be carcinogenic for your lungs.
So that being said, I'm mostly going to offer citations for "vaping is not great for your lungs." And that being said, I'm just going to offer citations for "specific parts of vaping are not good for your lungs." But my broader argument is that putting stuff in your lungs is going to be bad for your lungs, and these are just the most obvious ones we've found so far. Unfortunately I won't be able to find a citation for that argument.
So, first, the most recent: a study showing disposable vapes had incredibly high level of toxic metal emissions [1]. The non-disposable Juul et al variously have some concerning levels, but the insane numbers are on disposables, which are largely (entirely?) illegal in the US, at least. Still, they're not illegal everywhere, they were used heavily for several years in the US, and several of the top Google results were redditors complaining about the stupid ban and talking about how to get around it. All of this combines to lung damage down the line, and several of the toxic metals are outright carcinogenic, so lung cancer as well.
A more particular example: popcorn lung is a terrifying name, but pretty restricted risk, given the causing chemical is only in certain flavors, and those have supposedly stopped using it [2]. But again, an example of weird chemicals in your lungs cause weird things, and it'll be decades til we figure out all of them.
And finally, a study showing that vaping plus smoking leads to a four-fold higher risk of lung cancer over smoking alone (yes, they adjusted for age, gender, race, location of residence, prevalent comorbidities, and pack-years of smoking) [3].
[0] I was hoping to make a glib point about even high enough pollen concentration being bad for your lungs, but in fact a recent study suggests that allergies reduce risk of lung cancer! I'm chalking that up to allergies being your body's way of keeping non-air particulates from your lungs, but who knows. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/medicine/articles/10.33...
[1] https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acscentsci.5c00641
[2] Not a lot of research on popcorn lung, seemingly. Note that the name is related to its etiology, not its symptoms. https://www.summahealth.org/flourish/entries/2025/03/a-warm-...
[3] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39210964/
On the surface, the data from the American Lung Association appears to support that hypothesis...
https://www.lung.org/research/trends-in-lung-disease/lung-ca...
The graph seems to shoe me it's peaked and is back on the way down ?
Except reducing the first cause does nothing about whether air pollution is a nontrivial factor. And nonsmoker cancers are a nontrivial proportion since they account for 10-25 percent of lung cancer worldwide, please just read the article.
Besides the base rate fallacy there is the fallacy of assuming only the biggest factor is what matters, when other factors are nontrivial weights already. Another fallacy is the fallacy of relativizing a problem framing by insisting on comparison with an obsolete problem --campaigns against smoking have done a lot, so why are we still comparing today's problems against the problems of the 20th century. It smacks of "well, things were even worse back then", which surely the base rate fallacy is not trying to suggest.
> And nonsmoker cancers are a nontrivial proportion since they account for 10-25 percent of lung cancer worldwide, please just read the article.
I read the article, but I can't tell if there's a real problem or not. Having "nonsmokers accounts for 10% - 25% of lung cancer worldwide" doesn't leave me any wiser or more informed. Maybe I missed it in the article, so the rest of my comment is pointless, but ...
What's the percentage of lung cancer in nonsmokers? 10% of the pop? 1%? 0.00001%? Whatever the answer is, why isn't it in the article? Then we can see what "10% - 25% of $BASE_RATE" actually is. If we're seeing "10%-25% of 0.0001%", then that sorta tracks as fine, TBH.
The article seems almost designed to mislead: What's the base rate of lung cancer in nonsmokers? What's the base rate of lung cancer in smokers?
For example, if the base rate of lung cancer in smokers is 25% and the base rate of lung cancer in nonsmokers is 0.1%, then I don't see a problem here; funds directed to eliminating the remaining causes of lung cancer will be better spent on other research.
OTOH, if the base rate of lung cancer in smokers is 25% and the base rate of lung cancer in nonsmokers is %15, then I see a real problem here: maybe we need to direct more research funds towards lung cancer[1].
My expectation is that, with smoking so rare, lung cancer in the combined population must be very low, compared with the time when smoking was not rare.
-----------------------------------
[1] Actually the problem is worse than that: if there was a singular cause for that 15% in my example, then we it would have been cheaper to target that cause instead of spending dollars reducing smoking.
I do wonder if non-smokers are segregated based on second hand exposure: have a parent/spouse who smokes. Casino employees may have to spend a full shift bathed in smoke.
Yes, also, the base rate of smoking in different groups is important to take into consideration to prevent the base rate fallacy.
Very few Chinese American women smoke (~2%), so if smokers and non-smokers have the same chance of getting lung cancer not caused by smoking, then the number of non-smokers with lung cancer will be a larger proportion.
If 100% of some group would be non-smokers, then obviously 100% of lung cancer cases in that group will be in non-smokers.
It's similar to misinterpreting the fact that most people that were hospitalized from Covid-19 were vaccinated.
> It's similar to misinterpreting the fact that most people that were hospitalized from Covid-19 were vaccinated.
Whats the correct interpretation of this?
Let's start with an extreme example: each day more people die in traffic accidents, than by falling from a 10-story building. But still, we all can agree that driving a car is safer than falling from a building.
Why? Because driving a car you get more chance to get to your destination safely than falling from a building. ChatGPT estimates 0.01% chance to die in car accident per year, when driving every day, and 90-99% to die when falling from a building, once.
However, since there are many millions of people who drive a car every day, multiplying very little chance to die in car crash by millions of people, we get thousands of traffic-related death per day. Compare that to single-digit number of people falling from buildings, even if all of them die from it.
Back to Covid, let's imagine a village with simple numbers like this:
10 people were NOT vaccinated, 100 people WERE vaccinated.
Of 10 people who were NOT vaccinated, all 10 got hospitalized.
Of 100 people who WERE vaccinated, 20 got hospitalized.
_Correct_ way to look at this village would be:
ALL people who were NOT vaccinated, got hospitalized - 100% hospitalization rate.
But among those who WERE vaccinated, only 20% got hospitalized.
Hence, it's better to be vaccinated - this way you'll get 80% chance of not being hospitalized :)
I'm not a real statistician, and don't have actual numbers on hand, but situation with real world numbers is similar: among people who were vaccinated, less percent were hospitalized than among those who were not. It's just that we had so many many vaccinated people, that their small hospitalization rate, when multiplied by total number of vaccinated people, outweighs number of not-vaccinated and hospitalized people.
Yep, pretty much this. More information found by searching for "base rate fallacy" or just the Wikipedia page for it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_rate_fallacy
Cool. I didn't know the effect of the vaccine is so poor, that you now need to account for statistical biases to see its effect at all. That's less than what i was told, and I'm not happy.
Honestly what a shit vaccine. Measles and Tetanus vax did better.
Cool, so your question was in bad faith, you were not at all prepared to learn, have wasted our time, and you still don't understand anything about the base rate fallacy.
Honestly, what a shit comment.
You did educate me, just not in the way you intended. I thought vaccinated people don't end up at the hospital. Zero. Apparently i was lied to.
You must be a liar or willfully ignorant to say that after the entirety of 2019-2021 happened. The efficacy of vaccines in general and specifically of the various Covid-19 vaccines have been talked about ad nauseam. No even merely scientifically literate person has said that the Covid-19 vaccines (or any vaccine for that matter) are 100% effective.
It's so weird how people will close their eyes for basic science to virtue signal to their group. I sincerely hope you open your mind and prevent your virtue signaling from killing you (or anyone you know) in the next pandemic.
> No even merely scientifically literate person has said that the Covid-19 vaccines (or any vaccine for that matter) are 100% effective.
I can't argue that. I think its a "true scotsman" situation. If i quote the WHO[1] on this, you might just say they are not literate enough.
Take note that they say "Immunity" instead of "Efficacy", that is because it was the knowledge in 2020.
[1] https://www.who.int/news-room/questions-and-answers/item/her...
The rest of your post are personal attacks that do not add to your point.
> If i quote the WHO[1] on this, you might just say they are not literate enough.
This is a page primarily about herd immunity, not about vaccine efficacy. You had to dig to find this (or somebody dug for you).
Having said that, even though they added several sentences on how certain things are unsure or need more research, I will admit that they worded this specific sentence badly: "Vaccinated people are protected from getting the disease in question and passing on the pathogen, breaking any chains of transmission."
It is clearly overstated and does not match the careful wording later on: "We are still learning about immunity to COVID-19. Most people who are infected with COVID-19 develop an immune response within the first few weeks, but we don’t know how strong or lasting that immune response is, or how it differs for different people. There have also been reports of people infected with COVID-19 for a second time."
> The rest of your post are personal attacks that do not add to your point.
They do, because you clearly have a bone to pick that is preventing you from rationally approaching the matter and discussions in general. Think about what point you're actually trying to make and what that has to do with the base rate fallacy. Really, verbalize it. What is it? Why did you feel the need to inject that into the discussion, even though it doesn't belong here at all?
The WHO did not word it badly, it was the accepted knowledge back then.
You previously accused me of somehow missing the 2019-2021 timeframe, but that the vaccine doesn't really protect you well from infections was not established until autuum 2021. Consequently, as the scientific data to show it was not collected yet. Either you got the year numbers wrong or there is some retcon happening.
> Why did you feel the need to inject that into the discussion, even though it doesn't belong here at all?
Why is that on me? You tried a stab at antivax whackos and it backfired.
> Really, verbalize it.
I got vaccinated with the belief that it would reliably keep me from the hospital. Because it "prevents severe causes of the sickness" (translated from german). We blamed and shunned unvaccinated people because they were an unreasonable burden to the hospitals, and now you casually remark that its the low efficacy of the vaccine, not being unvaxxed, that causes the majority of people who end up hospitalized. For how long has that been?
Maybe we should have worked on a vaccine with better efficacy (hey, let me dream up the impossible, maybe immunity like with the measles vax where 99% ppl actually can't get sick at all) instead of harassing unvaccinated people?
> The WHO did not word it badly, it was the accepted knowledge back then.
Bullshit. I already showed how they were careful in the rest of their wording in your own source. 100% efficacy was never 'accepted knowledge'.
> Why is that on me? You tried a stab at antivax whackos and it backfired
Bullshit. The base rate fallacy was and is very present. The misinterpretation I referred to made sense to mention: It is a very commonly known recent and relatable example of the base rate fallacy. You made it a tribalistic ad hominem in your own head.
> you casually remark that its the low efficacy of the vaccine, not being unvaxxed, that causes the majority of people who end up hospitalized.
I did not say this at all and you still do not understand the base rate fallacy. A larger percentage of the unvaccinated people were hospitalized than of the vaccinated. There were just generally way more vaccinated people.
> Maybe we should have worked on a vaccine with better efficacy (hey, let me dream up the impossible, maybe immunity like with the measles vax where 99% ppl actually can't get sick at all) instead of harassing unvaccinated people?
See, now there we go. The mention of the Covid-19 vaccination triggered this frustration and made you decide to inject it where it did not belong and keep your mind closed to the math and science surrounding this. The math does not care about your feelings and is what it is. Accept it.
It’s difficult to give any accurate interpretation of, because it’s not a meaningful statistic.
For example, every person hospitalised from COVID-19 had consumed water at some point in preceding months. It’s not evidence that water causes severe complications from COVID-19.
No, this is incorrect and misleading. It is a meaningful statistic when interpreted right. See sibling comment.
In and of itself own, as quoted by OP, it’s not meaningful.
Sibling comment is thoughtful and helpful but adds information not present in OP’s statement (base rate).
Edit: ah, you are OP. Just swap “OP” for “you” :)
> In and of itself own, as quoted by OP, it’s not meaningful.
This is an overly literal, pedantic, and ungenerous interpretation of what I said.
Clearly the actual numbers as well as the base rates for the relevant groups are necessary to meaningfully interpret the statistic, but I was hinting at a similar case after describing the logic for the original case, not exhaustively describing the similar case.
Wasn’t my intention to be overly pedantic and certainly not ungenerous. I’m sorry.
You need to drink water to still be alive. You need to be alive to die from covid. Voila drinking water causes covid deaths.
>Are lung cancer rates up?
Incidence rates have been steadily dropping, in many areas by over 50% from 1990. Mortality rates have fallen faster still.
So yes, it isn't that other things picked up, but that as smoking has become a fringe other causes proportion naturally increases.
I love that the article mainly points out that it is unknown why asian women have an unusually high rate of lung cancer but the entire HN comment section (except for 1 thread) is just going on about radon.
Every time you look up something related to Radon, it's always cited as "the second leading cause of lung cancer after smoking"
I wonder if that's really true.
Radon is a big deal where I live. Most homes have a radon mitigation system which is a 20-watt fan that goes over your sump pump hole, and runs continuously to a vent on the roof.
I bought an Airthings radon monitor because of that stat, and one thing that I have learned is that those mitigation systems do not necessarily work. I have a system that works, but initially, even though my house had a system, it did not reliably keep the radon levels below the federal action level.
Barometric pressure, temperature, and HVAC all seem to have some bearing - tightening the house for air leaks actually did a lot of good in keeping levels low. Also, sump pump failures or ground water levels can "push" radon into the house. I dug a deeper sump pit and also put a secondary radon fan to pull air out of my sub-foundation drain pipes to ensure the air below the house is cycled.
Still, in Boulder County, my house will fail its radon test after a 2 hour power outage.
I am an evangelist for continuous radon monitoring, alerts and tests.
> tightening the house for air leaks actually did a lot of good in keeping levels low
Wait, really? Intuitively I would expect the opposite, that a draftier house is better for radon levels indoors
A better seal maintains the pressure in the house better.
Drafts form either from temperature differential and wind outside pushing in.
Radon coming up from the ground is still heavier than air, so it won't mix in very well if it can't displace anything.
It's not a perfect solution, as air movement from circulation will help it mix in, but a good envelope will help a mitigation system out quite a bit.
If too much air can leak in from too many places your exhaust fan won't be able to keep up and maintain a pressure differential across the whole area and fully cycle through the air volume. Instead of the air mass as a whole flowing towards the exhaust you will instead get mixing of inside and outside air and then pulling of a fraction of that. Ultimately failing to properly cycle the contaminated air and also spending a lot of energy on exhausting what was previously clean exterior air.
With it more sealed so you can get a decent static pressure it is like flushing a clean fluid through a pipe and only really needs a little more than the pipe's volume of fluid to clear it, with it poorly sealed it is more like scooping one cup of water out of a contaminated bucket, then pouring a clean cup of water back in and letting it mix before repeating the process, with the hopeful goal of eventually having an uncontaminated bucket of clean water. It would eventually be clean enough sure, but you might have to go through 1000x the fluid volume to get to a clean enough point.
Technically you could just increase your exhaust fan's power until it creates decent static pressure in even a leaky home, but you would also be exhausting a lot of the energy you put into your climate control system.
There's probably a tipping point between the stack effect (hot air rising and pulling on the radon) and drafts bringing in fresh air diluting the radon.
My house is a raised foundation and they covered all the ground underneath with plastic and put perforated pipes underneath that pull the air out. Radon went down 10x. The company has a 5 year guarantee.
I bought one of those because I have a couple radium clocks and a nice sample of uraninite, which is a tiny collection compared to the real enthusiasts but probably more radioactive stuff than the average person has. Radon is in the decay chain.
I've never seen above 0.7pC/L which is pretty good, although I don't know what proportion of the activity that is there is natural, or how much more it would be without the fan. I'm not sure what the natural radon levels even are in my area, I think the radon fan is just part of code here.
I bought a house in the hills of Los Angeles and we tested for radon. Turned out it was very high, and LA is one of the few places in California that has high radon. We got it mitigated, and it wasn't that expensive. I talked to neighbors and real estate agents, and no one wanted to know anything about it. I was shocked. Everyone is pulling the wool over their own eyes here.
Do you have a source for the high radon in LA? According to this county source it is pretty low in LA county but much more pronounced in Ventura county (1% homes with high levels vs 14%). I imagine there is some potential for accumulation effects but this is probably much worse in markets where the homes actually have basements.
http://www.publichealth.lacounty.gov/eh/safety/radon.htm
I found a map at some point. It was 5 years ago. I'm in the San Fernando valley area myself. I do believe there were hotspots in the hills here but perhaps it was mostly ventura county. I'd have to find the map.
Much of LA has some of the worst air in the country, so I think it selects for people who don't care about being poisoned by their environment.
> We got it mitigated, and it wasn't that expensive
What's the process, usually, adding some special ventilation system to the house?
Drill a 6” hole through the concrete foundation and dig out about 15-20 gallons worth of material. Install a 3-4” PVC pipe into the hole (the end of the pipe should be a few inches below the bottom of the foundation) and seal the hole up with hydraulic cement. Continue the PVC pipe up out out of the house. There are lots of rules around distance of the outlet from windows and doors and how high above roof line. Inline install a radon fan. How big a fan you need depends on many factors like soil type, home dimensions, etc. The fan runs 24/7 creating a vacuum under the house.
Yes. I went into detail in another message in this thread. I neglected to mention that our garage is a slab foundation unlike the rest of the house so it involved drilling a hole and putting in a ventilation pipe into it, as others have mentioned.
I’m actually scheduled for an install next Monday. Mine has two components:
1. The ventilation isn’t really “in the house” - the fan pulls from below the slab (and exhausts outside) to prevent radon seeping through. 2. Based on the best guess about my home age/area and radon patterns in my house, the slab was probably poured around the furnace, so the mitigation will include disassembling/reassembling my furnace to seal underneath.
It’s knowledge that can only hurt you if you’re selling houses. Just like lead paint - it’s smart to be dumb.
If ignorance gives you cancer while you live there, maintaining it in the hopes of avoiding disclose requirements in the future is both dumb and evil.
Nothing reveals the darkness in people's soul more than real estate.
And certainly people would not be dumb and evil?
I believe I have a significant body of counterevidence.
> Every time you look up something related to Radon, it's always cited as "the second leading cause of lung cancer after smoking"
> I wonder if that's really true.
That claim is in fact based on extremely poor research methodology. It is made by combining the linear no-threshold model of radiation damage (which contradicts everything we know about cellular repair and hormesis) with evidence from "case-control studies", a kind of retroactive hand-waving that has nothing whatsoever to do with a "controlled trial", despite the name.
I have never heard of radon as a domestic health concern (40+, have owned multiple houses). Does this vary by country or relate to mitigation industries in a locale?
Varies by geography, so yeah, by country as well. It's a major issue in the US as per the comments in this thread, but here in Australia, almost the entire country[0] has indoor radon levels at 5% or less of the concern threshold level[1]. A few people near certain industries may need to be concerned, but it's not the issue it is in the US.
[0] https://www.arpansa.gov.au/understanding-radiation/radiation... [1] https://www.arpansa.gov.au/understanding-radiation/radiation...
It varies with geology yes, produced by the radioactive decay chains of U-238 and Th-232.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2408084121
If I recall correctly it can accumulate more readily in basements, so that's another factor. The house I grew up in had an exhaust system installed due to elevated radon levels.
It varies by the amount of uranium underneath you. So yes, by country/state/province/etc.
Australia has the largest uranium reserves, but I've never heard radon mentioned here as a concern, so I assume it just comes down to the reserves being very specifically located.
I guess it's not much of a concern in Australia, I guess.
https://www.arpansa.gov.au/understanding-radiation/radiation...
>In 1990, ARPANSA conducted a nationwide survey of more than 3300 Australian homes to determine the radiation dose to the Australian population from exposure to natural background radiation, including radon. Based on this survey, the average concentration of radon in Australian homes is about 10 Bq m⁻³. This is less than in many other countries and compares to a global average indoor value of 40 Bq m⁻³. Average radon levels in Australian homes are only a little larger than the radon levels in outside air and are of minimal concern to health.
It's a concern for miners, but not normal homes. Also radon often concentrates in basements, and you don't have those.
I heard that even houses next door to each other can have different amounts of radon.
An estimated 38% of homes in my county have elevated radon levels.
We tested for radon when we bought our house and found the levels to be very high.
Fortunately the builders had installed a passive mitigation system so all we had to do was install a fan.
I can think of a few hypothesis, but I’d hit all the reasons we already know that people in their 30s are getting cancer first, like:
Natural gas burning inside with poor ventilation (solve by pushing electric everything, paid for by carbon tax paid by big oil)
ICE car exhaust (solve with EVs, subsidised by carbon tax paid by big oil)
Second hand smoke (ban smoking in public and within XX distance of a child, and make support for parents to quit free from cigarette taxes)
Microplastics in the water and the air including tyre dust (start regulating this/coming up with a long term plan to reduce it and filter it out, and put a government subsidy on certified and professionally installed under sink microplastic water filter products… paid for by those who put the plastic there in the first place)
Poor indoor air quality/high VOX (mandate air flow minimum levels for all new builds and make extraction fans for offices a normal requirement, and give tenants something to lobby against their body corporate to improve airflow in uselessly designed buildings since “sick building syndrome” is real but often impossible to know before you sign the papers)
But all of these factors have been around for many decades, why is it showing up now?
These cause cancer after many decades so for example people who were 10 when this started becoming a big issue are now getting cancer in their 30s and 40s.
This is a professional medical opinion from scientists that was aired on the news recently in Australia.
Cancers in the 30s, all types, are waaay up.
Because smoking is down, and with it, smoking-related lung cancer. Nonsmoker lung cancer numbers OTOH remain steady and its percentage is therefore higher.
> Leah Phillips, of Pewee Valley, Ky. Doctors first mistakenly diagnosed her with asthma and then anxiety. Later, they said she had pneumonia. When an oncologist finally told her in 2019 that she had metastatic lung cancer, he gave her six to 12 months to live. “Go home and get your affairs in order,” Ms. Phillips remembered him saying. She was 43, and her children were 9, 13 and 14.
(One of many cases mentioned in the article.)
Before you head for the lab, to start researching "why" - maybe you should tighten up the standards for diagnosis and testing? That could enormously improve the qualities & quantities of life for a huge number of patients.
Not being a scientist of any kind, I fully believe it is fossil fuel emissions, mainly from autos.
When I was very young, where I lived, a city of 100000, I would say less than 50% of the people there drove plus most worked in the city they lived in. Now, almost every household has at least 2 autos and most drive at least 10+ (16km) miles to work.
But, I also wonder if this is tied to the general increase in cancers for people under 50.
Pollution was way worse in the past. Old pictures of american cities from 50 years ago look like Beijing. We hadn't yet offshored heavy industry by that point and like you said, a larger percent of the metro was living closer to it. And whatever you saw outside was actually better than your air quality inside where these pollutants would accumulate and mix with Dad's cigarette smoke.
This was the air you were breathing back then (1, 2, 3).
1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://...
2. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0a/SKYSCRAP...
3. https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satev...
I know no one's ever going to change their ways cause of the increasingly evident ravages of climate change but I swear I feel like throwing rocks at the big SUVs rolling by with exactly one person in them during the heat domes here in NYC.
Just, so, gross.
And it truly is the _vast majority_ of cars going by with exactly one person in them. So wasteful, so much pollution, so hot... frustrating.
We really like our station wagon. Well, in principle at least. We won't get into the details of keeping a 12 year old German car going.
It's fuel efficient. It's not big. It's a decent people mover. It has more cargo space than many SUVs that are larger. Is low enough the roof racks are easily accessible. Added a hitch, mostly for more cargo space.
I'm starting to wonder if I've done more "truck things" than many of the people with trucks in the neighbourhood at this point. If I ever need to haul more, I'll just rent a truck/van for that moment in time. I'm not going to buy one to drive to the office.
When I had a Honda Fit I hauled a TON of cargo in it. A friend borrowed it to pick up a full-sized pinball machine from the next state over. I moved half of a 5-bedroom house (except for big furniture) across town in my Fit.
You don't need a gigantic beast. A kei truck is more than adequate for the vast majority of what people use pickup trucks for.
I love when people bring up the kei truck argument. If all you do is haul mulch around town from Home Depot, by yourself, and you already have another car, sure, go for it. But pretty much nobody owns a key truck as their only car. There's little crash safety, your knees are the crumple zone, they're not designed to go on 70 mile interstate highways, you usually can't transport many people. I would feel uncomfortable transporting friends/relatives more than a few miles on low speed roads in a kei truck, because they're 25+ year old designs focused on size rather than safety.
A kei truck is a supplementary vehicle at best... so you'd still want a car, and then you have two vehicles. Lots of people don't want two vehicles when a single vehicle that covers both use cases exists.
Sure, nobody needs a gigantic beast, but for people in lots of parts of the country, the downsides to owning a larger vehicle aren't that big. Why buy a smaller pickup truck when a full size truck is just a few thousand dollars more (in a country where the average new vehicle sells for $50k), gets similar fuel economy figures, and has more room in general?
Fits are pretty famous for their TARDIS-like nature. It’s a shame they’re not sold in the US any more.
Even my old Integra had a ton of trunk space when you fold down the seats. It was almost like a small pickup truck. I think a lot of people would get by with a sedan but it seems like the seats no longer fold down on a lot of smaller cars like that.
I get it. My wife drives a big SUV. She is a small lady, and says the car let's her see the road better and overall feel more safe.
Back when SUV's started to get popular, this was a trend they noticed as well. Back then, it was met with a lot of guffaws about yuppie housewives and all that. (This was before the term Karen had been coined)
I don't think you get it. And also this is an universal response from all women I ever talked about exactly this topic (and several guys too who had no idea about cars in general but knew about those famous football players or other celebrities who had suvs so they also needed one).
The root cause is plain and simple - your wife just needs to learn to drive better, then she wouldn't be scared regardless of her seating position. No amount of high position can compensate for overall crappy driving style and corresponding fear of driving and thus the 'need' for high SUVs. To keep her distance from car in front of her (which is basically why she feels the need to be sitting so high so she can anticipate braking earlier), and quick reflexes on the brake while 100% focusing on situation around her (which she should have anyway since there are other bad situations where higher positions doesn't give any advantage, in contrary).
I went the other way - very low-positioned bmws, with correspondingly much better and quicker handling, of course much lower consumption and much more rolling resistance. Its wagon so trunk space is massive and if not enough I can put on biggest Thule roof rack and still fit in our garage and low entry points like store garages (1.9m is the limit with it, never saw entry limiter lower than that). My wife learned to drive properly over time and has exactly same opinion, aka suv never ever because why.
Suvs and variants, at least those who don't go offroad (so most of them) should be reserved for physically challenged people due to easier entry/exit to/from vehicle. And that's about it for real objective advantages, the rest are just emotions which adults should manage to their advantage, not the opposite.
One thing I noticed as soon as I bought my large, offroady SUV (never having driven an SUV before) is that other traffic treated me much more respectfully. When I was in a compact sedan, traffic would swerve in front of me much more often, people would refuse to let me merge, drivers would ride my bumper, and so on. All of those things still happen, but much, much less frequently. For inattentive drivers, it's more difficult to ignore an SUV, and for angry drivers, it's more difficult to bully me around. And yeah, many of these bad drivers are in SUVs themselves, where it's easier to miss a nearby sedan.
Am I fixing the problem by driving an SUV myself? No, but I totally understand why people feel safer in them.
> The root cause is plain and simple - your wife just needs to learn to drive better, then she wouldn't be scared regardless of her seating position.
Correct, but unfortunately such arguments are like shouting into the wind. Bike helmets are the same. People just cannot be convinced that improving one's safety is 99% down to one's riding style and not a thin piece of padding on their head.
It doesn't matter how good a driver I, or your wife, or any woman, or any man is. That drunk driver who's also texting and just had a stroke and passed out from fentanyl could plow into you while you're innocently stopped at a stop light and you're being as defensive as possible. I don't see any way to change that calculus for the paranoid, unfortunately.
True, but false. Accidents that you can do nothing about are vanishingly rare. Even the situation you bring up is not one of them. When stopped/stopping you should be checking your mirrors to make sure the car behind you is at least slowing down.
On the other hand, the parent brings up a great example - following distance from the car in front. One of the most basic concepts of operating any vehicle and his wife is apparently incapable of applying it.
The overall point holds - people are irrationally worried about the 0.0000001% edge cases they can do nothing about anyway instead of trying to improve their chances in the 99.999999% of cases where it's their actions that matter.
It doesn't matter how rare the scenario is in reality, fear often isn't rational, but it makes us do things and we have no control over it. My point isn't that the fear is rational, it isn't. But unless you have a method to prevent people from assuaging their irrational fear by buying a certain vehicle, (or voting a certain way, for that matter), what is your proposal?
The method is obvious - adjusting the law so that such vehicles become way more expensive than the more reasonable ones. Don't ask me how to get that pushed through though.
But she's making everyone else less safe by driving in her tank-mobile. Those are much more deadly to pedestrians, cyclists, and those in smaller vehicles.
It's also an arms race where everyone buys bigger cars to see over all the other giant cars on the road. SUVs have been shown many times to be less safe, even for their drivers, but they give a feeling of safety which matters more than actual safety to buyers.
And for every comment screeching about pedestrians and rollover safety there's another one screeching about occupant safety. You can't really fault people for picking the one that benefits them when confronted with roughly equal screeching in both directions.
You absolutely can fault people for taking the choice that makes them safer at the expense of others' safety. I don't know how it became such a popular idea that a moral imperative is only valid if it carries no personal cost.
It may be small in the grand scheme of things but it is wrong to do this, in exactly the same way, but a much smaller degree, it is wrong to shove a child out of your way to escape a burning building.
Exactly what I was getting at.
There are several ways to view the story.
Another commenter mentioned failing to design cars for women (totally fair! Volvo famously had a botched attempt at this)
What I have come to appreciate is how vulnerable women feel in the world. It is hard to appreciate how that plays into car choice if you are a man. Most men will never be able to understand, imo.
Only 20 years ago used to be the "hairdresser car" meant a tiny little sporty coupe or convertible like a miata. I guess the marketing changed and cultivated a new generation with a new mindset.
20yr ago was 2005 and the "hairdresser and nurse" demographic were all driving Jeep Libertys.
Why does designing cars for women mean we need to turn them into main battle tanks? That's a false dichotomy. Women in cars are just as vulnerable as men in cars, just as female pedestrians are just as vulnerable as male pedestrians.
For a while, women in cars were more vulnerable than men in cars, in part because crash test dummies were sized to typical male proportions, and cars are built to pass crash tests rather than be as safe as possible for all occupants while still passing crash tests. This sometimes led to things like airbags being placed in locations that worked great for average height men but not as well for average height women.
I don't know if it's fair to say that women in cars are just as vulnerable as men in cars, the same goes for the pedestrian argument.
It seems like you're using "women" as a proxy for "smaller people". Children and small-statured men are just vulnerable as women in crashes. Regardless, we now do crash tests with a variety of body types.
A 5-foot man is just as vulnerable when being hit by a car as a 5-foot woman, and obviously children are much more vulnerable than grown women when being hit by giant vehicles.
Some people are selfish. It's not illegal to be selfish.
It can be morally wrong, however.
That's a problem of the legislators: identifying which immoral activities should be made illegal.
> She is a small lady
So, yet another case of cars not being designed for women (for those that don't get what I'm going on about - crash test dummies are modeled after men, leading to significantly worse crash outcomes for women [1])... it's infuriating.
Even a "small" BMW i3, a car one might think to be suitable for people of lower height - my wife tried out one at carsharing, and even despite the seat being all up front, she was barely able to drive the thing. The Mercedes Sprinter we rented for our last moves? Once she understood how the dimensions of that thing worked, absolutely easy going.
[1] https://apnews.com/article/nhtsa-female-crash-dummies-vehicl...
I'm curious about what the peak potential is and how close (or far) we are from there, because even if all things were 100% equal somehow, in a serious crash women will always fair significantly worse due to less musculature, lower bone density, thinner bones, and so on.
Well at the moment we don't even try, so any improvement will have massive impact.
> big SUVs rolling by with exactly one person in them
My mini-suv seems to be getting about double the gas milage my old normal car did.
But they are so tough though...
Now imagine the massive global polluting supply chain to put that SUV together for a single person.
I think you got downvoted for this but unsure why cause that's a great point that making one subway car that gets used daily to transport thousands of people vs creating a car per individual driven only for an hour a day is absolutely huge in terms of carbon and resource cost
yet they live in a wooden house... boggles the mind
I think people underestimate the impact of air pollution because it's so easy to get desensitized to it. Try wearing a respirator with good seal and filter in an urban area for 10 minutes or so. When you take it off you'll probably smell vehicle exhaust you didn't notice before. Human sense of smell tends to tune out constant low level background odors, but they can still be a sign of something harmful.
For sure. I live in an area with superb air quality and going down to LA and trying to take a run feels like smoking a couple of cigarettes.
I think you grossly underestimate the degree to which cars (and industry that we had yet to kick out to China) were dirtier decades ago than they are today.
We're talking like literal orders, plural, of magnitude when comparing between the generally no cats automotive fleet of the 70s with anything since the advent of both cats and computerized fuel injection. Any old timer can tell you of the smog that used to be frequent in urban areas. These days it's mostly gone, at least when California or Canada (depending on where you live) isn't on fire.
(INB4 people who are a net negative to public discourse construe this comment as some sort of endorsement for everyone driving everywhere all the time)
You emit less driving a new Ford F-150 Raptor from Texas to Alaska than using an old school gas lawnmower for two hours.
It's crazy how efficient and low emissions our engines today are, compared to 50 years ago.
Cars were dirtier but I think there were fewer.
Just look at old photos of city smog in the 1960s. It is night and day different compared to air today even with larger populations in these same metros in some cases.
Ohh it's definitely cars.
In more ways than one. A lot of "poor" countries have life expectancies comparable to the US. The big difference is they don't have a culture of every single person needing to own a car that spray carcinogens all over the place.
Obesity, which is its own massive wrecking ball, is also significantly lower in these "poor" countries.
The arrogance of laughing at poor people riding bikes to work when that would create a drastically healthier society.
Imagine if you had a 4km x 4km city with no consumer vehicles ( emergency and delivery exempt). Just walking paths and bike lanes. The people living there would be drastically healthier.
Or hell, it might just be luck. A lot of smokers live until there 80s enjoying a fat cigar once a day
It's honestly such awakening experience to see videos or visit these "poor" low GDP, stagnant economy countries and see their streets are full of happy, healthy people out walking, talking with each other. Kids out playing on the street, old people dancing in the parks. And then see our rich cities where everyone sits in traffic scoffing McDonalds raging out at other people doing the same. Huffing in diesel exhaust and tire microplastics.
Eh, visit a big city in India for a third view.
Have to wonder what happened differently between countries like China, Japan, and India. I'm not an expert but yeah there is something more to it. Better managed government perhaps?
Indian society is a non-homogenous mix of thousands of different coherent factions, with different languages, clear ethnic/genetic differences, identities, etc. all vying for control.
Many groups have tried to conquer and unify India over the millennia (Mughals, various Hindu kings, the British), but they always lose steam/interest before they can finish the job.
It is (in modern times) also an environment where you’re not allowed to murder your neighbor (generally) or the other factions will gang up on you.
It’s the perfect environment for backstabbing, corruption, and performative changes without actual changes.
No one has ever successfully forced a coherent unifying identity on India - the British just papered over things, and as long as they got paid, rarely attempted to exert more low level control.
China, in contrast, had the Qin dynasty/Qin Shi Huang, which not only did unify China into a coherent ethnic-religious state, but also had periods of clear ‘murder anyone who didn’t fit in exactly as the emperor wanted’.
This resulted in 90%+ of China being from a single genetic group (Han Chinese), having the same religious background (or lack thereof), and being used to being steered from a single central gov’t control point (the central Court in Beijing). The CCP only temporarily diverged from the same historic pattern.
China has a lot of ‘local control’ diversity on the ground (Hokkien, Cantonese, Mandarin are very different languages for example, and say to day life in Southern China vs Eastern or Northern China is very different), but is very used to the central gov’t coming in and stomping everyone into the ground if anyone messes with things the central gov’t cares about. And everyone is generally going to agree they are all Chinese first, instead of say Shanghainese.
Still not a trivial thing to ‘steer’, but China is more steerable.
Japan, being a relatively small Island that isn’t in the middle of any major trading routes or the like, has had even more extreme levels of ‘be like how I say or else’ applied over time, also from a central gov’t/emperor/shogun, and has a far more extreme version of ‘be like everyone else’ than China. They’re even more ethnically consistent - 95% ish.
Either xenophobia, or conquering, or chill, or whatever.Modern cars should be equipped with a catalysator, making the majority of pollution to be Co2, worsening the global warming.
To some extent heavy metals are being distributed in the air by the wheels in heavily populated areas.
This can be greatly improved by limiting traffic in heavily populated areas. Trump removed such a rule from New York City recently for reasons I can not comprehend.
Many european cities have improved air quality successfully and hence increased life expectancy by limiting car traffic.
The majority of air pollution of particles however, is caused by the industry (the companies making those cars, among others).
In fact, you are a worse polluter of the earth today if you buy a new Tesla than if you kept driving your 1980s gasoline car due to the amount of pollution created by producing a single vehicle.
Particulate matter is still a huge problem, mainly produced by tires and break pads, but also road abrasion. In terms of pure engine exhaust, catalysts don't do much here, you'd need a particulate filter, which not all cars have. So, cars still a problem wrt cancer, as particulate matter is carcinogenic.
European cities were especially bad because the EU pushed diesels while having significantly less emissions controls than gas vehicles until the mid 2000s. Most of the vehicles impacted by ULEZ are those same diesels.
I'm not sure why this isn't recognized as a great success.
Once a large enough portion of the population were no longer smokers, it was inevitable that many lung cancers would be in smokers. What is important in all of this is not "large sounding numbers" of people, but the percentage of the population, as a whole, who suffer from lung cancer. And a further confounding factor life expectancy today vs even 30 years ago (the longer one lives, the more likely it is for cancer of any kind to develop).
Give it a few more years, vapes will boost those numbers again.
I wish I was joking. But I'm not. I'm seeing 12 year olds with vapes quite regularly. They're so addicted, taking sneaky hits on the bus or on the train. Even when smoking was cool back when I was a kid, I didn't know of anyone that young who was that addicted.
Vapes are ridiculous, theyre marketed in the UK as being incredibly safe. But they mess with my body so much whenever I’ve used them I just don’t believe it.
overlooked fact i point out is that the carbon monoxide in cigarette smoke makes you nauseas and puts an upper bound on your possible hourly intake of nicotine, whereas vapes dont contain the CO, and actually taste good enough to drink... you end up taking magnitudes more nicotine than the traditional route
Nicotine by itself doesn't cause cancer.
No one said it did. It is however very addictive, causing addicts to smoke/vape more, thus increasing the load of the other toxic and carcinogenic substances.
Wikipedia does raise some concerning points about nicotine:
> Although nicotine is classified as a non-carcinogenic substance, it can still promote tumor growth and metastasis. It induces several processes that contribute to cancer progression, including cell cycle progression, epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition, migration, invasion, angiogenesis, and evasion of apoptosis.
I used to live by a busy street in a semi-dense part of town. Cars would be going around 45mph.
When I moved from that apartment after 4 years. I was shocked by the amount of black dust covering everything. from the walls to the shelves and floors. I think it was all tire pollution so switching to 100% electric won't mitigate.
It was pretty shocking and I wondered how much i increased my risk for lung cancer or other cancers.
Man, similar story. Spent a few months next to a mall parking lot with rough asphalt. Apparently the neighborhood had a car drifting crowd, and they'd regularly do so, which made me irrationally angry.
I only realized later that all the black dust everywhere must have been tire particles, when I realized other places DON'T have the black dust. Given the toxicity of tire pollution, it doesn't seem like my reaction was irrational after all. Sucks for all the people that still live there, who may not even realize what's going on.
I was just talking to my wife about playgrounds using shredded tires as the "mulch". I don't know where the rubber comes from, if and how it is cleaned, or what particulate material it carries, but it seems dubious at best.
It's banned for new installs in Europe and existing installations have to be replaced by 2031 [1] - although primarily to get rid of a microplastics emission source. Additionally, shredded tire rubber as infill is investigated for being contaminated with PAH (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) [2].
[1] https://www.hna.de/lokales/kreis-kassel/kreis-kassel-eu-verb...
[2] https://playground-landscape.com/de/article/2033-gesundheits...
> primarily to get rid of a microplastics emission source
I wouldn't be surprised to learn that inhaled microplastics were causing an increase in lung cancers. We know they end up deep in the lungs.
Personally, I more suspect vehicles. We got a grip on particulate emissions from diesel engines, but brakes and tires still emit fine dust particles. The average one way commute is 30 minutes in the US, so you're breathing in pretty filthy air for an hour a day...
This would be 'pretty easy' to demonstrate by comparing cancer rates by people who live adjacent to busy highways against those who live in rural areas. 'Pretty easy' is always nonsense in observational studies because the confounders have confounders that are confounded by other confounders; even more so for things that are relatively poorly understood, like cancer. But it's at least something that would certainly get (and probably already has been?) funded.
We got at least a link between heavy road traffic and stunted lung growth in children, as well as at least 10% increased lung cancer rates [1]. Additionally, noise from road traffic has been linked to increased rates of cardiovascular disease and mental health issues [2].
Both of this is compounded by the fact that people living next to major roads tend to be poorer, so there is a socio-economic issue present as well.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/25/living-n...
[2] https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/presse/pressemitteilungen/ver...
Hopefully not. I keep the windows up and recycle the air (which should be filtered on its way in anyway). I live a bit closer to road than I'd like considering the traffic levels though so even keeping windows open in the house could be an issue.
> which should be filtered on its way in anyway
Not really unless the car comes with HEPA filters [1], which most don't.
[1] https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/resources/documents/car-bus-exposure-...
6PPD (N-(1,3-dimethylbutyl)-N′-phenyl-p-phenylenediamine) •Purpose: Antioxidant to prevent rubber cracking. •Danger: When it reacts with ozone and air, it forms 6PPD-quinone, a toxic compound shown to kill salmon and other aquatic life at trace levels. •Status: Under increasing regulatory scrutiny (e.g., Washington State has started restricting it).
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2. Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) •Purpose: Byproducts from extender oils and carbon black. •Danger: Known carcinogens, mutagens, and endocrine disruptors. Persist in the environment and can leach from tire wear particles. •Status: Regulated in the EU; linked to air and soil contamination.
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3. Benzothiazoles (e.g., 2-mercaptobenzothiazole) •Purpose: Vulcanization accelerators. •Danger: Toxic to aquatic organisms, possibly carcinogenic, and bioaccumulative. •Status: Found in tire leachate and considered a contaminant of emerging concern.
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Nothing definitive about harm to human welfare yet, as far as I know.
They contain heavy metals like lead and PFAs. They also break down over time and leach microplastic into the wider environment.
Just ran across this new article on the microplastics in tires:
https://theconversation.com/one-of-the-biggest-microplastic-...
And it links to this further article on 'tire toxicity':
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/toxic-tires-6ppdq-auto-pollutio...
"When tires wear on pavement, 6PPD is released. It reacts with ozone to become a different chemical, 6PPD-q, which can be extremely toxic — so much so that it has been linked to repeated fish kills in Washington state.... Testing by a British company, Emissions Analytics, found that a car's tires emit 1 trillion ultrafine particles per kilometer driven — from 5 to 9 pounds of rubber per internal combustion car per year....
a team of researchers, led by scientists at Washington State University and the University of Washington, who were trying to determine why coho salmon returning to Seattle-area creeks to spawn were dying in large numbers.... in 2020 they announced they'd found the culprit: 6PPD....
Tests by Emissions Analytics have found that tires produce up to 2,000 times as much particle pollution by mass as tailpipes."
Those are known to be particularly awful and dangerous, particularly on hot days, and have been banned in a lot of places.
My (wealthy) high school had a "turf" field which uses little rubber pellets as the "dirt". Those were probably shredded tires too. During football season you would see them tracked around the school, and if you were a football player or in the band they would show up at your house.
also, they would periodocially dump "more dirt" onto the field, once every year or so. Not sure if they vacuumed the old stuff up or just dumped more on top, but sometimes you would go out there and there would be a huge pile of rubber in the middle, which I guess got spread out later
Why not just use dirt?! Our planet is covered in it!
Where I live during the Rugby and Soccer seasons it's not uncommon for the 'normal' pitches to be unplayable due to consistent periods of rain.
A number of schools, and public facilities, near me have switched to plastic pitches for this reason. I'm not advocating for them but there is a rationale.
BTW it's not just that being very muddy makes it difficult to play on but that using the pitch in that state trashes the grass.
Cost. Maintaining dirt and landscapes in this economy?
The lungs are exposed to air, but they're also exposed to a lot of bloodborne compounds, since a full vascular cycle goes through the pulmonary arteries.
The null hypothesis is "it's something in the air", but with the increase in non-lung cancers in young people[1] noted over the past decade, it's entirely possible it's something else, and lung tissue is one of the susceptible ones to whatever it is.
[1] https://www.cancer.gov/news-events/cancer-currents-blog/2025...
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This might actually be brake dust. In that case, the situation most likely will be improved by electric cars because they use their brakes far less often, decelerating with their motors.
Breaks are only part of the problem unfortunately.
> Resuspension of dust already on the road’s surface is the most significant contributor to non-exhaust PM by far, however these particles are difficult to characterize and manage because they could come from anywhere before landing on the road. Brakes are the next most significant source, and may also be particularly hazardous because of their small size and high metal content. Tires contribute the least, but they release large amounts of particles which act as microplastics in ecosystems.
https://www.nrdc.org/bio/john-bailey/beyond-tailpipe
I've heard that regenerative braking helps, but the relatively higher mass of an electric car (because of the battery) hurts. I wonder how it adds up in terms of brake dust produced.
My EV is around 25 % heavier than comparable ICE vehicles, but it only uses the disc brakes to stop the car from walking pace and hold it in place. I wouldn't be surprised if the amount of brake dust was less than 5 % of what my previous car emitted.
But then you have much more tire dust, since it rises rather exponentially and not linearly with mass of the vehicle. Overall more health-friendly but not as much as people(owners) like to think.
And it could be both tire dust and or brake dust are indicators of proximity to combustion engine exhaust. Any individual or combination of those could be an increased cancer risk. But only the dust is immediately visible and leaves behind a tangible trace
Yeah there's a lot of stuff comes off tyres, and EVs still have that. They also produce brake dust, although maybe less of it because of regenerative braking.
But they do have no tailpipe emissions, so they're still kicking out a lot less air pollution than a combustion-fuelled vehicle with not just the carbon dioxide but the myriad of pollutants which lower urban air quality so much.
Ultimately, a less dusty tyre would be a good thing, but the significant impact we can make now is to continue the EV transition knowing that like all solutions it's imperfect and we also need to use fewer vehicles and keep looking for better options.
I don't doubt a significant portion was tire and brake dust, but even gasoline and diesel can emit a significant amount of soot and unburned hydrocarbons.
Tires and brake dust (yuck)
Related from last year, similar asian women angle for whatever reason:
Asian American women are getting lung cancer despite never smoking
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40161811
Wok cooking is done at really high temp, which releases gases that are not present in moderate/low temp cooking. Woks trends asian, cooking trends towards women.
I don’t think you know young Asian American women if you think they are cooking with woks or even cooking in general.
I don't think most people are actually doing really high temp wok cooking at home regardless of ethnic background. My impression is that, while woks are more common for home cooking in china (not chinese americans, mind you), even there home cooking is usually not done at the high temperatures that restaurants use.
It's easy, incredibly easy, to overheat cookingware unintentionally. Add oil to a pan/wok that's overheated and it decomposes. Additionally, if the cookingware is coated with Teflon, above 300 °C this degrades into toxic compounds and can lead to "teflon flu" [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymer_fume_fever
You can buy nonstick wok-shaped pans but real woks that would be used for high temperature cooking are usually not nonstick. The original assertion that I was responding to was suggesting that the cause of the higher lung cancer rates in asian americans might be because of high temperature wok cooking.
I have no idea if nonstick pans are associated with higher lung cancer rates but even if they are I have no reason to think that asian americans are more likely to use nonstick pans, so the fact that it is easy to overheat nonstick pans in general might not explain asian americans having higher lung cancer rates.
Asian-Americans specifically have higher levels of PTFE in their blood too:
https://pfasproject.com/2023/08/25/asian-americans-have-much...
It doesn't have to be super-high-temp wok cooking. Just using a wok and a normal residential gas stove is not great for you. Even at home stove temps stir frying can throw up a fair amount of oil aerosols. And it potentially means standing over the stove with the gas going on high, even if it's not going to get as hot as a restaurant wok. The gas is bad for you, the aerosols are probably bad for you. It's plausible Asian-Americans use this sort of cooking method more often than non-Asians.
Its pollution, I door and outdoor, chemical and combustion.
Lung cancer screening should be used more broadly and improved over time in a data driven fashion!
We can catch things early, it shouldn’t be limited to only for smokers.
>Studies have also shown that people who don’t smoke but have a family history of lung cancer, such as Ms. Chen and Ms. Liu — both of Ms. Liu’s grandfathers had the disease — are at increased risk. This could be because of shared genetics, a common environment or both, said Dr. Jae Kim, chief of thoracic surgery at City of Hope in Duarte, Calif.
Couldn't this be secondhand smoke?
Dropping at the root since some threads are talking about radon and whether it’s based on region.
This is the EPA map for radon risks (zones) in the US:
https://www.epa.gov/system/files/documents/2024-05/radon-zon...
It happens more in women, especially in countries with traditional gender roles. They are doing more cooking in the kitchen where there is fire.
not in the US: https://www.cdc.gov/united-states-cancer-statistics/publicat...
The US fairly typically has electric stoves. Natural gas stoves are going to be the second most common form of cooking.
In the countries the OP is talking about, people cook over literal fires and fire pits (sometimes enclosed). Even when that happens in the US, unless you are talking about camping, you are likely talking about something like a well vented wood stove or wood stove oven like my grandma had.
An example of what I'm talking about: https://unfccc.int/climate-action/momentum-for-change/financ...
And here's what wood fired stoves look like in the US even 100 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XcuznPQjLs
This challenges our previous understanding of lung cancer risks, since we’ve always thought it mostly affected smokers. I’m curious how much is due to environmental pollution or other exposures, and how much is genetic. Hopefully, this will push for more research and better screening methods for everyone.
Not necessarily. Smoking has become less prevalent.
So while before, most lung cancer victims were smokers, we’re at the point where overall risk in the general population causes higher numbers than specific risk in smokers.
Because while most lung cancer victims were smokers, most smokers never got lung cancer.
Its not only lung cancer you can get, but others also have elevated risks. My uncle who smoked a pack a day never had any lung issues, but developed lymphatic node cancer in the groin area (and died from heart attack in his 50s, while both his parents lived till 80s in pretty good health but those never smoked).
Fairly typical fate for heavier smokers around.
Could this come from the hypothesis that covid could be oncogenic?
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10202899/
Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44466838
Whatever the causes, be it cars, industry, certain classes of chemicals and particles, there will be a vicious fight about regulating them, since the ideological divisions are now drawn along the lines of anti-cancer and pro-cancer politics.
> The thinking used to be that smoking was “almost the only cause of lung cancer,” said Dr. Maria Teresa Landi, a senior investigator at the National Cancer Institute, which is part of the National Institutes of Health.
Well, that tells a lot: overfocusing on a single cause because it is obvious and major. Well, let us hope the medical science learns this lesson.
ETA: not that I blame them, it is a reasonable attitude but not so good in science.
Not jumping the paywall but I'd guess that because relatively nobody smokes cigarettes anymore, cases of lung cancer with other causes are now more of what doctors are seeing.
Did jump the paywall — and FTA, regardless, the question remains what causes these non-smoker lung cancers. Issues of environment and heredity are discussed.
Non-paywall: https://archive.ph/nsMoH
Site is flagged as it hosts pedop. material.
The archive does what now?
guess the anti-vaxxers had a point.
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Among certain groups of Asian and Asian American women, that share is estimated to be 50 percent or more.
I suspect certain perfumes may be causing it.
Or perhaps cooking? Cooking can really spike AQI if ventilation is suboptimal.
Another potential explanation is cleaning products.
I think these are both far more likely than perfume, as there is a much stronger link between AQI and lung cancer than perfume and lung cancer (if there is any at all).
Professional chefs are largely not Asian women, and cook a lot more. Has there been a similar trend in them?
Cleaning products is a possibility.
Incense is another one --- those who burn incense may not consider it smoking, but any burning plant matter is going to emit similar products of combustion.
Commercial kitchens generally are better equipped for proper ventilation.
> Many Lung Cancers Are Now in Nonsmokers. Scientists Want to Know Why
Because hypocrisy does not live long. They blamed cigarettes for lung cancer, ignoring all other causes. "Oh, you have cancer but didn't smoke ? You surely were inhaling cigarettes smoke from somebody else.". We can polute further with no repercursions.
smokers thirds FYI: - one third dies a direct smoking related death - one third suffers from smoking related diseases then dies - one third dies of something else, younger than the other two
They used to exaggerate the risks of cancer to smokers. Not many people get lung cancer at all, so 80% of them being smokers still doesn't represent that much risk for an individual smoker.
But like half of smokers ultimately end up with COPD, which can be like taking years to drown to death.