Radon Blogger Call – Abbreviated Transcript January 25, 2012, 1:30 p.m. ET Bill Long, Branch Chief for Radon and Air Toxics in the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Air and Radiation: Today our speakers are going to share with you some of the key messages about radon and its risks. Not enough people know about radon, too many people die from radon exposure. Radon is a radioactive gas. It’s a natural element in the earth that you can’t see or smell but it can be deadly and a lot of people don’t realize how dangerous it is and how to protect themselves and their families from those risks. Janice Nolen, Director of National Policy for the American Lung Association: I would just like to start out with just saying that if I told you, the public, that your home might have something in it that causes lung cancer, that we know causes lung cancer, you would think that people would really reach out and say, “golly, we need to find out what that is. We need to find out whether our home has that.” You might think that would be a really easy thing to get people to do. Unfortunately, it’s not. And I talk to reporters all the time who are interested in indoor air and they’ll call me about one issue or another and I always have to say, “oh and do you know about radon? Radon is a carcinogen, radon causes lung cancer.” During 2011, we had another 221,000 cases of lung cancer, 221,000 new cases of lung cancer last year. The diagnosis of lung cancer is devastating, because unlike many other cancers, lung cancer remains overwhelmingly deadly. The five-year survival rate is only fifteen percent. I know what that means personally, my first husband died from lung cancer at the age of 46. It can hit, it hits hard, and there is very little opportunity to recover from it. We must reduce the wide spread exposure to this number two cause of lung cancer and the leading cause of lung cancer in nonsmokers. Radon greatly increases the risk that someone who smokes will develop lung cancer. It’s an equal opportunity threat. Still about 2,900 of the deaths from lung cancer, each from radon caused lung cancer, occur among people who have never smoked. Studies are warning us that women may actually be a little higher risk, but smokers are especially at risk. And in addition we still do urge people – we encourage people to test their home for radon. We need to take steps to prevent this problem, to prevent it from concentrating indoors, to prevent people from having to breathe this known carcinogen. We can test homes easily, we can easily repair and install the equipment that is useful to keep families safe, we can build homes that don’t have this problem. What does that mean? It means fewer people will have lung cancer. It will save lives. So we urge you, it’s been said already, please let people help know about this. The information needs to be out there far more widespread so that we can all take steps to protect our health and to protect the health of our families. Gina McCarthy, Assistant Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Air and Radiation: Every day, Americans, whether you’re young, old, rich, or poor you can be breathing high levels of radon that contribute to the development of lung cancer. Radon claims the lives of over 21,000 Americans each year and is the number one environmental cause of cancer mortality in the U.S., but the problem is even worse for the poor. Nearly 13 percent of economically disadvantaged people live in high radon potential areas, that’s more than 6 million individuals. Poor families are less likely to test, they’re less likely to afford to mitigate, and they’re more likely to live in rental housing where there are few laws that actually allow them to successfully protect their families from this type of exposure. We need a ramped up level of awareness of voluntary actions if we really hope to significantly cut radon induced lung cancer rates. People are still dying and if we work together we can stop that. That’s why this issue is so important to me, that’s why it’s important to EPA and why EPA has been working for 20 years spreading the word and using our funds to try to seed state and local actions. Bill Long, Branch Chief for Radon and Air Toxics in the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Air and Radiation: The federal government is in a unique position to promote radon risk reduction in homes, schools and day care facilities that it owns or influences. Because we influence and own a lot, about, we think, 7.5 million buildings the federal government either owns, manages, or funds in some way or another. This past June at the National Healthy Homes Conference in Denver, nine federal agencies came together and announced the release of the Federal Radon Action Plan. The plan outlines the steps the federal government can and will take as part of their everyday work to protect people from risk associated with exposure to radon in the buildings that the federal government owns or influences. A great place to learn about the plan is on our website, http://www.epa.gov/radon. Jon Gant, Director of Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Healthy Homes and Lead Hazard Control: My office is tasked with working with the larger offices in HUD such as public housing and seeing if there are ways to improve the health of all of those that HUD serves. It’s part of our strategic plan, it’s one of our annual performance goals there are only eight and this is one of them. And radon is part of that effort. In our healthy homes production program, we have encouraged all of our grantees to test for radon. Kristy Miller, Media Campaign Director, EPA: Some of the products that we have available for you are television PSAs, radio PSAs, we have e-cards available for you. We’ve had a partnership with the National Association of Broadcasters spreading the message about living healthy and green and how easy it is. Changing expectations is really what this is about. So go to http://www.epa.gov/radon for the radon media products that are all free on http://www.epapsa.com. Ask the media in your local areas to please run these public service announcements for free. All you have to do is go out there and ask and they will and they will support us. We do know that the touchstone here for people to ask is their loved ones, their family and their children. They may not take that test for themselves but they will do it to protect their family. Thank you.