Radon (Rn) Induced Health Risk Assessment: Need To Re-Examine Current Policy And To Act Beyond Disciplinary Boundaries
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Introduction Radon (Rn) is formed by uranium (U) decay & its exposure is the 2nd leading cause of lung cancer after smoking in North America. Natural U contents in rocks &soils are quite variable in nature. In 2009-11, Health Canada survey showed that 7% homes had indoor Rn levels above the guideline value (200Bq/m3). However, the survey had no scope to link elevated concentrations of U in local bedrock to indoor air Rn levels. We wanted to assess Rn induced health risks in such micro-geological settings. We also intended to take a fresh look at the current recommendations concerning keeping Rn detectors at home. Methods Makkovik, a remote Inuit (Eskimo) community in Labrador was selected for study. It lies within the Central Mineral Belt which contains potentially economically exploitable concentrations of U. We selected 25 homes (20% of the total) by convenience sampling. We kept electret ion chamber Rn monitoring devices in the lowest levels of the home (basement/crawlspaces) for 5 months (Oct. 2013 – Mar. 2014). Health Canada guidelines, however, suggest keeping detectors in the normal occupancy (>4 hrs/day) areas at the lowest lived-in level of the home. We obtained lung cancer data (1993-2013) of all local Inuit communities. Results 28% homes (7) had Rn levels above the guideline value (249-574Bq/m3), higher than average local health region (i.e. 3%). 2 homes previously tested normal levels by Health Canada (the devices were kept in bedroom) also included in our study & both had higher Rn level (335 & 501Bq/m3). Makkovik had 70% higher lung cancer rate than rest of the Inuit communities. Discussion Geological profile of any community is very important for proper assessment for indoor Rn-related health risks. Testing at basement/crawlspace provides more accurate assessment of health risk. Any report showing low Rn level in normal occupancy rooms might give a false sense of security if Rn remains trapped for time being in basement/crawlspace area due to intact floor.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".