Helmut Wabnig wave his hands in the air, and poted"

" 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."

Helut, get a grip! First, who said anything about cigarette smoking.
Why even bring it up?

Second, most people of sufficient age and educated to somewhere between
the B.S. level and the PhD level in the science will share with you
that the Radon Scam is the grandson of the TV Tube Radiation Scam,
where in the 1950s, when television was new, everyone was urged to
purchase a protective shielding screen (manufactured by the Old Gypsy
Products Manufacturing Division of Gypsy Switch Internationale) to
place over the screen of their ancient black and white TV sets. Turned
out that this was a total scam or fraud, and while some of the early
color TV sets could produce an insignificant amout of soft radiation
from their high-voltage rectifiers, that too never amounted to
anything.

Then later came that paranoid campaign against the fluoridation of
drinking water, mostly perpetrated by ignorant old ladies and dentists
who didn't want to see any loss of buiness, but that also faded. Today,
most progressive communities fluoridate their drinking water, and you
are hard pressed to purchase a tube of tothpaste that does not contain
fluoride.

Then came the great ozone scare, and up to a few years ago the Radon
scare. Both turned out to be more hype than fact, and were based on
someone getting paid for a service that was completely bogus. What is
not bogus is the fact that uranium and radium elements in natural rock
slowly radioactively decay to produce any number of daughter products,
some of which are radioactive and some are not. Radon is one of these,
but is naturally emitted at such a slow rate that it is incapable of
producing any notable health effects on humans. Thats, a fact, and if
you don't like that fact, then you are a foolish sheep simply waiting
to be sheared by the many (now quite a few lesss) selling Radon
remediation systems for the home. This scam ranks right up there with
those Gypsy Scams that try to sell Carbon Monoide detection systems to
homeowners with electric heat!

With Radon, the Gypsy remediation scam artist will generally tell the
home owner that the Radon can accumulate over a long period of time and
reach health threatening potentials, YET OMIT TELLING THE HOMEOWNER
THAT RADION HAS A HALF LIFE OF ONLY ABOUT 3.8 DAYS, AND SOME OF THE
OTHER RADIOACTIVE COMPONENTS ASSOCIATED WITH THE RADON EMISSIONS HAVE
HALF LIVES MEASURE IN MINITES. Still, once scared into paranoia if not
hysteria, some homeowners immediately write checks in amounts of
thousands of dollars to have this risk eliminated, then return to their
normal routine of smoking and drinking!

Read a textbook covering nuclear or atomic physics and tell me if and
where I am incorrect.

Now regarding smoking. Since the age of 13 I have regularly smoked a
pack of unfiltered Camel cigarettes each and every day, and next year I
will be 70. In spite of the enormous risks and exposures to toxic
chemicals, high level radiation, and smoking, I have already outlived
all of my ancestors and assume that I will likely die at about the age
of 75. After all, some people don't seem to realize that no matter how
careful one is in the conduct of their life, they will eventually die.
That's another fact. I've life my life in such a way that I can
truthfully say that I've enjoyed every day of it, and will continue to
do so as long as possible. Still, I can also tell readers that I would
be unwilling to trade one cigarette or one shot of Single Malt Scotch
Whiskey for one day of life in a nursing home. Given that, like many
older people, I have a foolproof plan and mechanism in place to avert
that unthinkable possibility.

Death will come to each of us individually in many different way,
taking some of our young and many of us older folks. Still, at least to
me, the very worst death of all would be to die realizing that I had
wasted much of my life being scammed into ridicululous cautionary
measures by the hoaxers, scam artists, and Gypsy frauds as some do.

Harry C.

p.s., How would each of you prefer to die? For me, it would be in one
of two ways. The first would be like Slim Pickins in the movie "Dr.
Strangelove". The second would to be being shot to death by a lover,
just as I had climaxed with another woman. OK, this is an adult
newsgroup, and I am a curmudgeon! For me, the worst possible death
would be what those three stupid mountain climber experienced on Mt.
Rainier stupidly climbing the mountain in December -- They paid the
price of their stupidity, and it is too bad that so many others had to
put their lives at risk trying to save them from their idiocy. Make of
that what you want.















Helmut Wabnig wrote:
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.