Radon Rules
Certain costs, uncertain benefits.

By Angela Logomasini, director of risk and environmental policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
March 1, 2002 9:40 a.m.

he Environmental Protection Agency will soon issue rules regulating radon in drinking water. But according to a recently released General Accounting Office report, the agency has some work to do first — it has underestimated the costs of its proposed standard by at least 20 percent.

EPA's failure to come up with reliable cost figures is not the biggest problem with this and other agency rulemakings. Questionable agency science means that we can't be sure of any benefit from all the money we spend on EPA regulations.

In the early 1990s, the EPA Science Advisory Board criticized an agency report that alleged serious radon risks. The board noted that "there is no direct epidemiological or laboratory evidence of cancer being caused by ingestion of radon in drinking water" and that "it is not possible to exclude the possibility of zero risks for ingested radon." The SAB chairman concluded that a standard of 10 times less stringent than EPA's proposed standard would prove sufficient to protect public health.

In 1998, the National Research Council (NRC) issued a congressionally mandated risk assessment, which was supposed to settle the issue. But the report simply rehashed the same questionable data. It showed elevated cancer levels among miners who smoked heavily and inhaled very high levels of radon gas as well as nitrogen oxides and mineral dusts in mines. Neither the NRC nor EPA has been able to establish that inhalation of low-level radon gas at home or ingestion in water causes cancer. NRC noted that ingestion risks might well be zero.

Yet the NRC report speculates that radon released from drinking water into the air might cause as many as 160 deaths (mostly among smokers) annually. Ingestion of radon in water might cause 20 deaths a year. Based these estimates, EPA claims that its 1999 proposal would save a total of 62 lives.

The EPA and NRC ignore the fact that radon may not only be safe at low-levels, but that such exposures might even be beneficial. Studies indicated that our bodies create defense mechanisms against chemicals and radiation when we are exposed to low levels, which protect us from harm when exposed to higher levels. Some have even shown lower cancer rates in areas of the nation that have the highest radon levels. There are limits to such "ecological" studies, but they do cast doubt on the claim that radon increases cancer risk.

Failing to consider any such possibilities, EPA proposes to reduce the radon levels in drinking water from 4,000 picocurie per liter (pCi\L) to 300 pCi\L. EPA estimates that this change would cost $407 million and deliver $362 million in benefits. Having failed the cost benefit test, the agency justified its proposal based on a provision of the 1996 Safe Drinking Water Act. This provision allows public water systems to meet a less stringent standard if the state, locality, or public water system sets up an EPA-approved plan to regulate radon found in indoor air.

To that end, the EPA rule would allow systems to stick with the 4,000-pCi\L standard if they operate in an area that has an EPA-approved "multimedia mitigation plan." EPA then assumes that states will choose the mitigation route, bringing the cost of the regulation down to $80 million. Rather than simply offering more flexibility, the mitigation-route law will enable EPA an excuse to enter into an entirely new area of government regulation: Control over levels of radon in indoor air. There are serious problems with this approach. The GAO says that costs could be much higher than EPA estimates. Radon remediation technology can cost thousands of dollars for an existing home and requires continual monitoring. Mitigation plans may impact new home construction, raising the price for these homes.

Past attempts to regulate radon in indoor air have in fact been quite expensive, as Leonard Cole documents in Element of Risk: The Politics of Radon. For example, a New Jersey program permanently displaced residents from their homes after the government spent millions removing soil from under homes. The state then spent years and millions more trying to dispose of the soil as political debates raged over disposal options.

All of this debate, regulation, and cost, yet studies still can't clearly demonstrate a risk of radon in homes. Nor can they determine how much it will cost us. But there is one thing we can be sure of: The regulators will have lots of jobs, and the regulations cost us dearly.