On 13 Jan 2007 19:01:15 -0800, "
wrote:

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?
Don't understand?
The Radon exposure in an average ground floor is equalled up to 5
tschicks per day, according to literature.
Radon is responsible for 80 to 40 % of our lifetime dose, they say.
The numbers depend strongly on the date of publication,
getting smaller with time.
One will not easily find a derivation of the numbers on internet.
They are "retro calculated" estimates dating from before ice age.
Anyhow, where Radon is, lung cancer is more prevalent, period.
You are the necessary statistical deviation from the mean,
without you, census would collapse.
w.

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.

Yawn.

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.