Suchergebnisse

Although radon exposure has been identified as the second leading cause of lung cancer, fewer than 6% of U.S. homeowners test their homes for radon. This report examines participants'follow‐up radon testing behavior subsequent to receiving an initial screening radon level greater than 20 pCi/L. Sixty‐two participants in the Iowa State‐Wide Rural Radon Screening Survey who had radon screening measurements over 20 pCi/L were questioned by phone survey 3 months after receipt of their radon screening result to assess: whether participants were aware of radon's health risk; if participants recalled the radon screening results; how participants perceived the relative health risk of radon and whether participants planned follow‐up radon testing. Only 19% of the respondents specifically identified lung cancer as the possible adverse health outcome of high radon exposure, and the majority of participants underestimated the health risks high radon levels pose when compared to cigarettes and x‐rays. In addition, less than one third (29%)of the participants actually remembered their radon screening level within 10 pCi/L 3 months after receiving their screening results. Only 53% of the individuals correctly interpreted their screening radon level as being in the high range, and only 39% of the participants planned follow‐up radon measurements. Receipt of radon screening test results indicating high radon levels was not an adequate motivational factor in itself to stimulate further radon assessment or mitigation. Our findings suggest that free radon screening will not result in a dramatic increase in subsequent homeowner initiated remediation or further recommended radon testing.

Human exposure assessments require a linkage between toxicant concentrations in occupied spaces and the receptor's mobility pattern. Databases reporting distinct populations' mobility in various parts of the home, time outside the home, and time in another building are scarce. Temporal longitudinal trends in these mobility patterns for specific age and gender groups are nonexistent. This paper describes subgroup trends in the spatial and temporal mobility patterns within the home, outside the home, and in another building for 619 Iowa females that occupied the same home for at least 20 years. The study found that the mean time spent at home for the participants ranged from a low of 69.4% for the 50‐59 year age group to a high of 81.6% for the over 80‐year‐old age group. Participants who lived in either one‐ or two‐ story homes with basements spent the majority of their residential occupancy on the first story. Trends across age varied for other subgroups by number of children, education, and urbadrural status. Since all of these trends were nonlinear, they indicate that error exists when assuming a constant, such as a 75% home occupancy factor, which has been advocated by some researchers and agencies. In addition, while aggregate data, such as presented in this report, are more helpll in deriving risk estimates for population subgroups, they cannot supplant good individual‐level data for determining risks.