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So are radon levels.
Are the two connected?
Shale gas pipes in Pennsylvania
Credit:
Beyond Coal and Gas/Flickr/CC By 2.0
“We collected those samples in order to make
some estimates of the end user,” Lewis says, meaning Pennsylvania residents who cook or
heat their homes with natural gas. “Basically,
our conclusions show that they were receiving
very small radiation doses from the radon in
natural gas.”
So, for the DEP, the issue was taken care of: Pennsylvanians are already advised to test for
radon in their homes and Marcellus Shale gas
wasn’t adding to the problem. But then the state’s radon experts got kind of blindsided by the
Joan Casey, the study’s lead author, says her team noticed the upswing in radon in Pennsylvania happened around the same time as the fracking boom. “We wanted to see if this new industrial development potentially was contributing to increased levels of radon in homes,” she says.
Using DEP’s own data, they divided the state into regions with no fracking, some fracking and high levels of fracking and then analyzed 860,000 radon test results in the different regions. They found increased levels of indoor radon in areas that had the most fracking and significantly higher indoor radon concentrations in buildings located closer to drilled wells than buildings located farther away.
The DEP’s Dave Allard was not happy with the media attention the study received. He believed Casey’s findings could unnecessarily scare people. One problem, Allard says, is that radon is trending up in every region of the state, no matter how close or far it is from fracking activity.
Allard is convinced the uptick is related to increased soil moisture and says a study from Finland published last year supports this claim. Casey says her analysis takes rainfall into account. She says her results and those of the DEP study that found a small increase in indoor radon are reason for concern.
“There’s no safe level of radon exposure, in terms of lung cancer risk, and any increase in radon levels translates into an increased risk of lung cancer. That’s definitely true,” Casey says.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth Casman, the CMU professor who had stopped cooking, started gathering her own data. With the agreement of energy companies, Casman and a team of researchers took gas samples from pipelines. She says she was relieved by her findings. “We took all the worst cases and still it came out to a non-scary risk level,” she says. “That’s when I calmed down about cooking. I’m cooking again.”
Casman says unless someone used an unvented stove to heat their home and didn’t leave the house for 70 years, they wouldn’t really have an elevated risk of lung cancer from Marcellus Shale gas. “The increment from cooking [caused only by] the Marcellus is probably not going to be killing a lot of people,” she says.
Still, Casman and others want more data. But for now, she says, if you’re a Pennsylvania resident concerned about radon from your gas stove, just open a window.
This article is based on a report by Julie Grant of the Pennsylvania public radio program, The Allegheny Front, which aired on PRI’s Living on Earth with Steve Curwood.
increased levels of indoor radon in areas that had the most fracking and significantly higher indoor radon concentrations in buildings located closer to drilled wells than buildings located farther away.
The DEP’s Dave Allard was not happy with the media attention the study received. He believed Casey’s findings could unnecessarily scare people. One problem, Allard says, is that radon is trending up in every region of the state, no matter how close or far it is from fracking activity.
Allard is convinced the uptick is related to increased soil moisture and says a study from Finland published last year supports this claim. Casey says her analysis takes rainfall into account. She says her results and those of the DEP study that found a small increase in indoor radon are reason for concern.
“There’s no safe level of radon exposure, in terms of lung cancer risk, and any increase in radon levels translates into an increased risk of lung cancer. That’s definitely true,” Casey says.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth Casman, the CMU professor who had stopped cooking, started gathering her own data. With the agreement of energy companies, Casman and a team of researchers took gas samples from pipelines. She says she was relieved by her findings. “We took all the worst cases and still it came out to a non-scary risk level,” she says. “That’s when I calmed down about cooking. I’m cooking again.”
Casman says unless someone used an unvented stove to heat their home and didn’t leave the house for 70 years, they wouldn’t really have an elevated risk of lung cancer from Marcellus Shale gas. “The increment from cooking [caused only by] the Marcellus is probably not going to be killing a lot of people,” she says.
Still, Casman and others want more data. But for now, she says, if you’re a Pennsylvania resident concerned about radon from your gas stove, just open a window.
This article is based on a report by Julie Grant of the Pennsylvania public radio program, The Allegheny Front, which aired on PRI’s Living on Earth with Steve Curwood.
continued on page 12 ...
radon levels.
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