What can you tell me about "Radon Therapy"?

Radon therapy is not a sanctioned biomedical therapy in the United States, primarily due to continuing uncertainty over how much radon exposure is safe. Environmental agencies in the United States, Canada, and Europe consider radon an indoor health hazard. In the US alone, there are 20,000 radon-induced lung cancer deaths annually.

The major source of concern is that the decay of radon gas produces radioactive progeny which adhere to dust and smoke and be inhaled. The inhalation of these particles has been correlated with an increased incidence of lung cancer in uranium miners, although the correlation is strongest among smokers. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Surgeon General, and other agencies responsible for protection of the public, as well as most of the scientific and medical communities, believe that there is no level at which exposure to radon is safe. Because of the correlation of high levels of radon exposure with cancer, these agencies extrapolate the same cancer risk to lower doses, applying the “linear, no-threshold” (LNT) model of radiation carcinogenesis. According to this model, any exposure to radon is harmful. (See "EPA Assessment of Risks from Radon in Homes" (June 2003) at www.epa.gov/radon/risk_assessment.html

However, some scientists take issue with the LNT model. This point of view is based on the hormesis phenomenon, the observation that small amounts of stress on biological organisms, caused by, for example, a chemical, heat or ionizing radiation have a stimulatory or even beneficial effect, although high doses of the same stressor are harmful or lethal. According to this view, 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, DNA repair, antioxidant action, and immune response.

Because of remaining uncertainty about radiation and its potential dangers, radon therapy exists completely outside of the biomedical health care system, and is never covered by medical insurance. As an “alternative therapy” radon's "health" benefits may be more psychological than physiological. People may feel that their arthritis or asthma is temporarily better but in doing so they have increased their long-term lung cancer risk.

For more information on radon's health risk visit www.epa.gov/radon/healthrisks.html.