On 12 Jan 2007 20:02:07 -0800, "
wrote:

I suppose in my mind you are clueless to even go to this extent on
Radon.

Just goes to show how some otherwise intelligent people can be folled
by the Radon scams.

I'm a physicist living in New England, and I wouldn't ever go to the
bother of conducting a Radon test, although my home is predominately
built on granite based bedrock. I've made lab quality radiation
measurement in by basement, and guess what, found nothing. Just for the
heck of it an for a good laugh, I allowed one of those Radon
remediation guys to come into my home and take some measurement. After
placing a few carbon filled container in my home and sending them back
to his uncertified lab, he declare that we had one of the worst Radon
contamination problems that he had ever seen, but could remediate at a
cost of $4,700!!!!

Fun guy that I am, I asked them to run a second series of test which
they did. This time I planted six specimens of Radon emitting isotopes
(some really hot Uranium speciments and a few samples of Radium
compounds) around the basement, which could be expected to drive the
Radon content in the air off the top of the chart,

Your expectations were wrong from the beginning.
To drive the radon content up in a room one must consider the
activity-to-surface are of the specimen. With several kilograms of
Monazite sand it will work, but not really with some hard stones
of ore. Put them into a tin can and you have a "radon cow" which you
can milk every few days to test some equipment. The radon does not
steam off from a stone like smoke from a burning piece of coal.


but the report
returned said that although not as high as perviously, the Radon
content of the basement air was sufficient to warrant treatment.
Interesting, by the time the cost of the remediation treatment has
decreased to $2,200 for the $4,700 originally quoted.

I am convince that the entire Radon scare thing, while now undergoing a
slow death is absolutely nothing but a total scam perpetrated to make
money. It is simply a high-tech version of the old Gypsy Curse thing,
in which if you pay someone, they will make the evil thing go away.
Sure, right!

Did you every bother to research what those Radon tests that you
purchased amounted to in real quantitative radiation level
measurements. I'd guess not. Realize that you simply got sucked up
into what is today a dying scam, a scare technique designed to cause
you to invest in remediation systems that are both costly and entirely
not required.

In short, you got conned!

Harry C.

Disagree.
In an average flat house every inhabitant smokes 5 cigarettes per day,
even when he is a non-smoker. Radon is linked to lung cancer
and the governmental bureaus of statistics have the numbers of deaths.
Nothing to down-play, as you do, OTOH nothing to exaggerate.

w.