Further Radon Legislation Needed
Gloria Linnertz, a spokesperson for Cancer Survivors Against Radon and The American Association of Radon Scientists & Technologists, Inc. is encouraging people to write to their congressmen and women to ask them to work for effective radon policies that save lives. The following is an open letter that can be personalized to encourage your senator or representative to take action against radon, the silent killer, today.
Web based Letter to U.S. Senators or Members of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Dear Senator or Congressman/woman:
Why are you letting this happen?
20 plus years and counting: Around 500,000 radon related lung cancer deaths have occurred in America over the past 25 years.
All since the passage of the 1988 Indoor Radon Abatement Act – and we have a voluntary federal program.
Real Families Are Hurt By This Voluntary Effort:
Gloria Linnertz and Marlene McEwan both lost their husbands to lung cancer.
Liz Hoffman was 37 years old when diagnosed with lung cancer and her home tested high from radon, a radioactive gas. She never smoked. She is a young executive who is dying from radon induced lung cancer. Liz formed Cancer Survivors Against Radon (www.cansar.org) to help create a voice for those who can no longer speak.
None of these individuals had ever heard of radon, a radioactive gas that is found in American homes.
There are 25,000 more families like them affected by this mortality every year.
Radon is a toxic radioactive gas that is at high risk levels in about10 Million American homes. In fact, there are more homes with elevated than at any time in our history, despite a 20 year voluntary U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Radon Program. The program has been allowed to fail because of EPA’s lack of effective leadership.
Please help Cancer Survivors Against Radon begin to change this story.
Up to 25,000 American die each year from lung cancer caused by radon in their homes.
Why is the EPA radon program a voluntary one when we have a growing number of homes with high radon?
Please hold hearings and ask the U.S. EPA to live up to the requirements of the 1988 Indoor Radon Abatement Act, and the recommendations of the EPA’s Inspector General who recommended the Agency increase regulatory approaches.
EPA needs to work out a plan with Housing and Urban Development (the related McKinney Amendments) that requires all federally backed mortgages to require a radon test or radon notification from the U.S. EPA.
(For notification, please see the successful 2008 Illinois Radon Awareness Act as an example.)
Please ask Administrator Jackson to reverse the U.S. EPA radon retreat that began in the 1990s, one that has seen human and funding resources diverted from a radioactive toxin found in millions of American homes.
Please urge the EPA Administrator to properly fund needed technical resources, or send this program to another federal agency with the resources to do a proper job.
Please do not let the US EPA abdicate technical requirements to underfunded, understaffed state programs. Congress never envisioned such actions in 1988.
500,000 deaths over 20 years with no meaningful risk reduction.
Where’s the Protection in a voluntary program at USEPA that is allowing this to happen?
