becomes : if radon being released directly from groundwater to indoor air is not the biggest contributor to the phenomenon of higher rural radon exposure , as current research indicates , then what might it be ?
How ( and to what extent ) radon exposure contributes to elevated lung cancer risks in diverse rural areas currently remains mechanistically unclear . In part , this is because earlier studies documenting radon differences between urban and rural areas were based on ( i ) smaller-scale datasets with limited statistical power ( a few hundred radon readings ), ( ii ) geogenic radon potentials ( i . e ., not empirical measurements of radon in indoor air ), ( iii ) data without matched urban controls from the same region , ( vi ) data that were potentially confounded by uncontrolled differences in radon-modifying property metrics between the urban and rural built environment , and / or findings that could not connect individual exposures to lung cancer risk37 , 52 , 53 , 54 , 55 , 56 , 57 . To address these knowledge gaps in a systematic manner , we surveyed indoor air radon levels in residential properties across a broad geographic region with a highly diverse urban to rural paradigm , controlling for differences in regional building metrics that influence radon , and deriving radon exposure outcomes , radiation doses , and increased cancer risks based on the activity patterns of people living in these diverse communities .
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