Okay? You ready for me to start? Okay
. Well, like I said, I'm Mike Fuller
. And I'm with the Virginia Bureau of Radiological Health
Division of the health Department. And what I'm gonna
talk to you about today is right on and some
of the questions and some of the issues. Um
, but first, I wanted to give a brief
overview of what our responsibilities are, in general,
in the area of reddish protection. Okay, The
Radiation Control Act 1950 charge the Virginia border health with
responsibility to protect the citizens of Virginia from unnecessary exposure
to ionizing radiation. And the way we go about
carrying out the responsibilities is basically through four sub programs
or areas of responsibility. First of one is our
X ray protection program. This is a picture of
an old antique X ray, too. And with
x ray, every piece of equipment for diagnostic use
in the in this state is required to be certified
in compliance with our ionizing radiation rules and regulations.
The second area of responsibility just for radioactive material licensing
anyone who uses radic materials in their work, whether
it be for industry research or medical use, and
so forth as long as that particular material. That
particular isotope is not regulated by the federal agency,
the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Then they must first apply
for a a license through our bureau, be able
to use those materials. Another responsibility we have is
for environmental surveillance around fixed nuclear facilities, namely the
two nuclear power plants and the Babcock and Wilcox facility
in Lynchburg. Um, we do this in coordination
with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, collecting samples and so
forth. Here you can see one of our specialist
collecting water sample. This is from the discharge canal
of Syrian nuclear power plant. This is an ongoing
continuous programs. Samples were collected on a weekly basis
on analyzed for any detectable levels of contamination that may
be going to the environments on our final, fourth
and final sub program, Or any responsibilities for emergency
response way have the responsibility that's set forth in the
Virginia Radiological Emergency Response Plan for radiological monitoring and assessment
in case of, uh, an accident involving either
a nuclear power plant and a potential release their or
perhaps an accident involving transportation of great material. So
and in that, in that regard, our responsibility
is to do the monitoring. Determine the initial assessment
. What the situation is, what contamination levels are
and so forth. Then advise through the department emergency
services people to the governor's office on what protective action
should be taken. I guess the fifth area,
which isn't really a program yet um not so sure
if it will or won't be, will be right
on. Have to wait and see what the General
Assembly wants to do about it. Go ahead.
Someone go ahead and flip that off. So I
guess the first question everybody has is what is Radan
? I wanna talk a little bit about what it
is why we're concerned about it. First thing I'm
gonna do, um, is talk a little bit
about give some basics, if you will. Basic
radiation and so forth. And also some, uh
, talk a little bit about risk and so forth
and units, So it might be a little bit
dry in the beginning, but this will give us
, um, basis so that we can then talk
about the health of health effects and so forth on
the potential risk from radar. First question is,
what is Radan? Radan is a radioactive gas it
occurs naturally in our environment, and it cannot be
detected by human senses. It is. You can
see it, smell it, taste it, and
it results from the natural break ground. In this
case, radioactive decay of uranium and radium and uranium
and radium are found and at least trace amounts throughout
the Earth's crust. Like I say, we need
to talk a little bit about basics of radiation and
so forth. And I am a nice A topo
are Reddick. Material is radioactive if it undergoes,
by definition, radioactive decay. And that means that
spontaneously emits energy from its nucleus in the form of
particles and or raise. And there's nothing that could
be done to stop this process. Radioactive item will
continue to be radioactive until it gives up that energy
. At that point, it becomes stable. The
way we talk about how radioactive a night, um
is, or the rate at which it undergoes radioactive
decay is defined by its half life, and that's
just simply the amount of time that one half of
the the atoms in a radio in particular material it
takes for that for one half of those to become
stable. So In other words, the longer the
half life the the slower rated, which it gives
up energy and moves to a more stable state.
There are three basic types of radiation that we're concerned
about. I guess you'd say we're most concerned about
when it comes to business of radiation protection, and
that is gamma radiation, beta radiation and Alfa radiation
. First of all, gamma radiation is electromagnetic radiation
, which means that it is a wave type radiation
. There is no mass. It's a true wave
. It has very high penetrating power. You can
think of it in terms of X rays like you
go when you go to the dentist or go.
The doctor had a chest X ray and so forth
, so it's very penetrating. And it is,
as a result, is an external radiation hazard.
Second type we mentioned was beta radiation. A baby
radiation is a charged particle that is emitted from the
nucleus of an atom and has the mass of an
electron and as moderate, penetrating power. What I
mean by that is it does penetrate somewhat, but
it can be attenuated or shielded by very thin materials
, and as a result, we think of it
in terms of a skin dose and the third type
of radiation that we're gonna talk about and really one
we're concerned about today, when, when dealing with
raid on his Alfa radiation. It's a large charged
particle. It has very low penetrating power. In
fact, you can shield alfa particles with a sheet
of paper. Um, but it is very energetic
. It has what's referred to as, Ah,
high Let linear energy transfer, which means that it
has a lot of energy associated with it, and
it gives it up in a very short distance or
short range, and as a result, it's considered
an internal hazard and a significant one. If Alfa
emitting particles are ingested or inhaled into the body,
they get next to very sensitive sales and very sensitive
tissues. And that's where the potential damages. Oh
, this is a chart of a decay chain.
I talked about reactive K and how things move to
more stable states. This is what we're talking about
this one, this title radium. It's really gives
us everything we need to talk about Radan. We
start with uranium is the parent product range. Uranium
and radium are found like I said in trace amounts
throughout the Earth's crust, so it's plenty of their
available. They undergo radioactive decay and become Radan gas
. Now we've been talking about Radan all along,
and everything you hear in the press has to talk
about the deadly raid on gas and so forth and
so on. And really, Radan is not a
problem. Um, right on is a chemically inert
. It is radioactive, but it's chemically inert,
which means it doesn't react very well with anything and
so, but what it does is it transports.
It gives us a mechanism for transportation of other particular
matter, which is a definite hazard. In this
case, the two that were most concerned about is
you can see Radan continues to undergo Rex of decay
as a gas that then is able to move into
the home or what have you, where it can
concentrate. It undergoes further rate after decay to polonium
2 18 to lead bismuth back to polonium 2 14
and then to lead, which is our stable out
of in this chain. At this point, you're
no longer radio, radio, radio active, but
these two alfa emitters us talking about here the ones
we're most concerned about. Polonium 2 18 and polonium
2 14. These air the particular matter that have
given up into, say, the home environment if
they're allowed to become concentrated and that's where the health
risk is. And again, this is sort of
like what we're talking about here, ready after gas
emanates up from the ground and undergoes radioactive decay.
Like I said to the particular matter of the polonium
, for example, Now these air are charged all
radioactive, um, particles, And so, as
a result, they like to attach to things their
electro statically, I guess. Attractive, if you
will. So they all attached to dust particles smoke
services, what have you? But as these,
uh, dust particles and so forth are inhaled into
the lungs, or as you in helps a radioactive
gas and it happens to go toe undergo right after
the kay while it's in your lungs, then these
particles can attach to very sensitive tissue inside the lung
, which is what this is depicting here. So
you have a particle is admitting out for radiation and
it gets trapped in the lungs because of its high
l a t. That I talked about the energy
linear energy transfer. It is able to give up
quite a bit a significant amount of energy to this
very sensitive sales. A relatively few, um,
sales because of its low penetrating power. So it
gives up a lot of energy in a very small
package, if you will. Wow, I want
to talk a little bit about some units so we'll
know what we're talking about. When we get into
the risk portion of this, we talk about Radan
. We talk about in terms of units of PICO
curies per leader. So the unit that we use
on a curious, just simply a unit of radio
activity. It is named for Madame Curie, who
discovered radium in 18 98. And ah PICO Curie
is basically one trillionth of a curie or one times
10 to the minus 12 power of a curie,
and approximately are one PICO curies per leader of Radan
is approximately equal to the decay of to Radan Adams
, um, per minute per leader of air.
So we're not talking about a lot of activity at
any one time, but it's over the course of
a lifetime over a very long period of time that
we talk about risk associated with radon right on the
Cape. Fox, on the other hand, or
defined or we talk about them in terms of working
levels is the unit. And this is the way
to describe the concentration of radon decay products. Um
, in a particular volume of air. This unit
was developed to describe the exposure that the uranium miners
were getting back when, well, it really was
the first hazard. Associating with Radan was in the
uranium mines. Um, and they wanted to,
oh, be able to somehow relate the biological effect
or health hazard, if you will, with the
concentration of Radan or the Radan decay products in the
mining environment. So they came up with a unit
called a working level month. There's a way to
determine what exposure would be, what the exposure was
, and also how that's why they would set exposure
limits. And so, basically, at a working
level, month is equal to 170 hours at a
concentration of one working level, with the idea that
typically a minor would work in the mine for 170
hours per month. Thing to me, Thio remember
about all of this is between radon and radium.
Decay products is 0.2 Approximately working levels is approximately equal
to four PICO curies per leader, and that is
the EPA. Guidance for remediation is at the level
where by the EPA says if you're above that concentration
, you need to do something to remedy the situation
. Like I said, we talk about the health
effects right on as far as we know right now
, Um, the only known health hazard associated with
Radan is lung cancer. And the reason is because
as you inhale these particles that are Alfie mentors and
so forth and they become trapped in the lungs,
they, uh, like I said, they continued
to under directive two K and give up this Alfa
Energy. They have plenty of energy to do sale
damage at the molecular level, that is, that
they can break up or mutate the DNA molecule within
the sale. Well, if that 99.99% of the
time or whatever that sale, well, if it
becomes mutated will die. That's the way our body
is set up to repair itself. But in the
rare case that that cell does not die and it
continues to undergo are reproduced rather, um, and
reproduces at a at an accelerated rate. We call
that lung cancer. Like I said, the risk
factors are basically a za result of uranium miner studies
. Back in the fifties and sixties, there was
a lot of study done on uranium miners, not
only in this country but also in Sweden and Canada
and some other areas on. There was a definite
increased risk of definite number of lung cancer deaths in
that are an increase in lung cancer deaths among that
population. Now there's a couple things I need to
say about those studies. First of all, that
those studies or not, a representative sample of the
population that we consider at risk from indoor Radan.
They were typically men in there, forties or fifties
, Or that was. Some of the studies were
not conditioned for cigarette smoking and so forth, but
it is important to remember in the with radiation protection
that we always assume fortune ality of effect. It's
a conservative approach, but, um, we see
when you see cancers at some levels and in some
populations, you assume linearity of effect. In other
words, you just extrapolate down and so forth.
Um, in this case, though, we have
a little bit unique situation because we've also found a
lot of homes with higher concentrations. That was what
was typical than uranium minds. For instance, there
was Stanley Watchers home in border town, Pennsylvania,
which is where most of the, um, initial
interest was about this problem. They found approximately 13.5
working levels, which equals out to about 27 2700
PICO curies per leader in his home. And like
I said, the EPA guidance for a mediation is
four, so you can see there's a vast difference
there. Typically in the uranium mines was about one
working level or 200 PICO curies per leader, just
just the e p a level for it. Za
recommended guideline for remediation. In other words, above
those levels, you wanna do something about it?
It's four PICO curies per leader, which is approximately
equal to 0.2 working levels. It's probably a good
time at this point to mention why we we got
involved or why there's such uninterested Radan to start with
. It turns out fellow by the name of Stanley
watchers, which is the home I just mentioned was
an engineer in Limerick nuclear power plant, and boy
are near Boy Town, Pennsylvania. He lived in
border town, and he continually set off radiation monitors
upon leave, trying to exit the plant each day
. Which was interesting because the plant was under construction
. There was no react material there to speak of
, and the only reason they had the monitors even
working was to test them out. So the kind
of puzzled everyone, and after a lot of investigation
, they found that the source of his radiation was
his home. So, like I said, they
found approximately 2700 PICO curies per leader in his basement
. And it's a considerable level of contamination. Is
, you can say is you can see compared to
the four people carry leader range. Uh huh.
When we talk about health risk in particular, in
the case of Radan, there's it's dependent on several
factors, four of which there are four main factors
. I suppose our first of all the concentration,
the higher the concentration of right on contamination in the
home. The higher the risk is Faras lung cancer
is concerned, the time spent in any given concentration
is also considered a factor to consider. Um,
if you leave the home every morning and go to
work and stay gone most of the time. Obviously
, assuming that you goto area with a lower level
or lower concentration than you risk is diminished as opposed
to, say, a child or someone who stays
in the home, especially Young Shin, to stay
in the home most of the day or someone else
would be confined to the home. The age of
the individual is a consideration. The older believe it
or not, the older you get, the more
radio resistant we get, especially when the case of
Alfa Radiation and course of General Health there's always a
lot of pressure for someone to compare risk. This
chart was developed by the EPA, and it's in
one of the publications that I'll be making available to
everyone after the talk, Um, but attempts to
compare risk at a given concentration to normal outdoor levels
of Radan and also to cigarette smoking and chest X
rays. One point I'd like to make about this
. It's a very high levels say about 200 PICO
curies per liter and above. There's really no controversial
. There's no disagreement that there is a definite risk
associated with those levels. Is that these lower levels
that some people, I believe that the EPA may
be overestimating the risk. However, like I said
, it's it's common practice in reddish and protection to
assume linearity effect. In other words, if you
know you have a risk of 200 people, curious
police and you know what that risk is, you
simply extract laid down. And that's what we came
up with. Four reason they have four is not
to say that below that there is no risk.
But if you have elevated levels of Radan based on
today's technology, um, it's unlikely that you would
be able to reduce it any lower. So brings
out an important point here. If you look at
four PICO curies per leader, which I said was
remediation over Thio, the risk column you can see
it's approximately equal to about 240 chest X rays per
year, and I want to make a point about
that. Like I said, we also have responsibilities
and X ray protection program. What we're talking about
here is risk of lung cancer only. Obviously,
there is a lot more risk associated a lot of
other types of risk associated with X rays. And
so we're not saying that that that 240 chest X
rays per year you have relatively low risk. It
is simply risk for lung cancer only. So that's
the reason there's numbers seem a little bit high.
Another way to compare risk is to talk in terms
of rads and rims, if you will. These
are the units that are typically used in radiation protection
, uh, to set limits and so forth at
one working level. I'm gonna We're all working through
this equation. It's really not that big a deal
. But basically what? This shows that at one
working level or 200 PICO curies per leader, it's
about 700 rim per year along does, since we
only have since we only have 170 hours in a
working level months. When you back calculate that it
turns out when you talk about working level months,
you have 50 of them a year, so we
just added a lot of months, but anyway,
so you have fucking 50 working level months per year
. You multiply that times 0.7 rad for working level
months. Simply conversion factor to convert it to rads
, which is, um, or typical, um
, unit of exposure. And for Alfa radiation,
we have what's called a quality factor of 20 because
of the way that it does so much damage in
a very short range. And so the conversion factor
for Alfa is 20. So it's 20 rim per
rad. So that's how we get 700 rim per
year. Longo's now recently the National Council for Radiation
Protection and Measurements in Publication 26 30 came out with
conversion factors to convert from organ doses. Two whole
body doses, which is what occupational, um,
limits and so forth are set up on the set
upon whole body does. So we have a factor
for long to equate. Ah, long does to
a whole body dose of 0.12 So you get ah
, whole body dose from one working level or 200
PICO curies per leader of 84 rim per year.
And you can compare that to five rim per year
as an occupational dose limits in other words. If
you're a worker in a nuclear power plant, the
NRC, through its federal regulations, um, will
not allow you to receive more than five per year
. Um, to give you some really scary numbers
about this. We talked about the Stanley Watchers.
Home is an example. They had 2700 PICO curies
per liter, which works out to about 9450 rim
per year long dose and 1134 rim per year.
Whole body dose from those levels. If you assume
thistle also, by the way, assumes 100% occupancy
. If you assume 75% argument see, which is
about what, um, his two young Children were
estimated a having in that home. It works out
to about 63 rim whole body dose, uh,
at okay, 63 Reimut 11 working level and 850
a half rim per year in the Watchers home.
I'm not so sure if we heard very much about
the media attention in back in 1984 when that first
happened, but they kept talking about thes Children had
the equivalent risk of developing lung cancers if they had
smoked three packs of cigarettes a day for 70 years
in that one year that they were there. And
so this is how you get those those numbers because
, like I said, the occupational limit is five
rim per year, and these Children received 850 and
a half rim in that one year just from these
Radan exposures. I'll stay. No, we don't
. They're being They're being monitored. Obviously, from
what I understand, they're getting a little bit of
tired of all the attentions, but they because they
got quite a bit of it for about a year
or so. But, you know, for lung
cancer, you're looking at 15 to 20 year latency
period anyway, so we don't really expect to see
anything for quite some time. The Virginia Department of
Health and also the U. S Environmental Protection Agency
recommend that individuals have their homes tested for Radan for
obvious reasons. There's several ways to go about doing
this, and there's different types of test, depending
on what you hoping to accomplish with the test.
The types of questions that you wanted to answer.
Basically, we have, uh, two types of
test screening and evaluative test first of all at the
screening test. It's a short term test is designed
to give only an indication of whether or not you
have a problem not to give you definitely, uh
, numbers. We talk about radon and its associated
risk and so forth. They're all based on annual
average concentrations with a screening test. You're not trying
to get you. That's not the number you're looking
for. These air done under worst case conditions,
which means that you want to do the test in
the lowest level of the home that's considered living space
. First of all, second of all, you
wanna have closed house conditions, which means it's been
defined, I guess in the protocol to mean you
want the house closed up with no fresh air ventilation
for 12 hours prior to the test and for the
duration of the test. And it's best to be
conducted in the cool or the cold months, the
months of which you heat the house. Because what
that accomplishes is a situation where you create air currents
that rise through the structure. Ondas You do that
you tend to create more negative pressures in the lowest
part of the home thereby tending to draw out is
much soil gas, as you possibly can if the
test is done. If this screening test is done
under what we consider worst case conditions like I described
, and if the level becomes comes up less than
four PICO curies per leader, it is unlikely that
you will have an annual average concentration above four people
. Four people curious per leaders. So if it
comes out with a screening test to below, then
that's really all you need to do at that point
now. And evaluative test is a little bit different
that's designed to actually determine what your annual average concentrations
are. It's a long term test. Um,
usually it's a Siris of maybe 33 month test.
Um, Theo Uhh! The screening test comes up
to be greater than four PICO curies per liter.
Like I said, that's only an indication. So
at that point you want to do an evaluative test
, and the only other point we wanna make about
that is that if you do a screening test and
it comes up very, very high, say above
200 people, curious plead or something like that way
, don't recommend that you wait until you have your
evaluative test done before you start some sort of remediation
. There's something that, when is that how there's
some things that you could do first that are fairly
inexpensive, like ceiling cracks and so forth in the
basement so forth. And we recommend you do that
as you're trying to evaluate simply because anytime you reduce
the levels, you're reducing your exposure. Now in
order. Do these tests. There's different types of
instrumentation. Basically, there's, UH, two categories
. Passive tests are passive detectors and and active detectors
have some examples of both appear. I'll show you
, um, for passive detectors. We have basically
two types of available today. Charcoal activated charcoal canisters
and Alfa Track um, detectors. First of all
, the charcoal. I have a couple of examples
here. These are both available commercially through private companies
. I tried to get a new example of UNEP
. A canister was unable to get one before I
came up here, but they're Devon's, essentially the
same as this one. Only it's metal and a
little bit thinner and a little bit wider. This
one is from health physics associated in Illinois, but
the way you use this thing. It's mailed out
to the homeowner and with instructions on how to use
it. But you simply take the top off.
You have a screen in here, basically holds the
charcoal in and also collect some of the particular matter
. But you just exposed this thio the environment in
your home for 3 to 7 days, where that's
orbs on the charcoal, the raid on gas that's
available to the environment. Then, once it saw
you're testing periods over you, simply close it back
up airtight. Mail it back to the vendor,
the where the analysis is done in the laboratory,
where they can analyze issues in some Elektronik detection detection
equipment and determine what the levels were for that time
period. Yeah, this is another example here of
the same sort of thing. It's just a little
bit different when it comes is in a foil pouch
, which keeps it airtight. When you deployed,
you simply pull it out. Hang it up somewhere
. So this is impervious to air here. This'll
paper. Um and it's ah, the charcoal is
inside this little bag. When it's through, you
just simply put it back in the pouch and,
uh, seal it up. It's important to see
that. Make sure that those were sealed up tightly
. When you're transporting, you don't want to count
for more right on than what you actually have.
Um, like I said, the charcoal canisters air
distributed through the mail, and they're deployed by the
homeowner. Um, the advantages of charcoal, first
of all, is low cost, typically about 10
to$25. Now they distributed by the mail.
They require no special skills. They require no electrical
power to do the test, and with proper analysis
, you get precise results. Disadvantages of charcoal first
and foremost, is humidity and very humid conditions.
Um, charcoal will absorb the moisture, and so
, for any long period of time you won't be
able to use them. In other words, more
humid. It is the short of the amount of
time that they could be used, and they're only
good for short term testing. Seven days, even
in the best condition, seven days is about the
maximum. You can deploy these. Another type of
passive device is the Alfa Track Detector, or ALF
attractive Senator. Have an example here of one a
little bit small, smaller and you just hangs up
like this. This is one, so the way
it comes and it's four pouch seal. It's basically
a small sheet of plastic, a very specialized type
piece of plastic inside this little canister. And what
happens is as these Alfa radiation admitting, um,
particles and gasses art, um, come by this
piece of plastic. They permanently mark or etch that
plastic. They are then sent back with the deployed
by the homer and then sent back to the lab
where these edges or tracks, if you will are
counted, and that the number of tax corresponds to
the level of Radan and so forth in the environment
. They're good for, uh, screening or evaluation
measurements. They typically stay in the home about three
months, so four of them are consecutive. Siris
of four would give you 12 months of testing,
which you could average the four levels and get your
annual average concentration. The advantage of the offer track
again is fairly low cost. They're running typically about
20 to$60 for a test. No special skills
are needed, and they're distributed by the mail again
. There's no electrical power needed, and they can
do long term testing. The only real disadvantage of
the Alfa tracks is you can't do very short term
testing. In other words, you can't really use
them to do any sort of diagnostic work or anything
like that. Three months is about the shortest amount
of time that you can leave one out. Now
the other type of radar detection equipment is referred to
as active detectors. I have an example here of
what we use. The health department. Just called
a working level monitor, our continuous working level monitor
, its Elektronik detector. It's installed in the home
and then programmed to take a sample, typically for
2 to 24 hours. And then in order to
get your readout or your results. If you simply
read a couple it back to your reader, which
is what this is here, where you could get
an immediate readout of what the level is so you
can see this is the monitor here, an actual
air pump. We call it an active. It
means it's actually taken an air sample pumps. The
air through here has detection electronic equipment inside. Then
when you want your results, or if you wanna
programming and also, to get the results, you
just simply plug it into the reader and we get
a hard copy read out of the results. The
advantages of Anak two detector like this is first of
all, you can do very short term testing on
which is good for diagnosis to say, once you've
had screening tests and that was higher than you did
in evaluative Test on that came out high. Well
, of course, the next step is to want
to fix the problem. Before you can fix it
, you need to determine what the entry points are
. Where am I getting the problem from? Is
that coming from my sump pump over here? Is
it coming through these cracks in my basement floor?
With this type of detector, you can set him
up. It helps you to determine. Just wear
. The Radan is coming into the home. You
could also be used to do long term test.
Um, there's battery packs is available with these things
on, and so they can run. You can
only be programmed up to about seven days, but
each seven days you could simply re program and continue
to let it run. So you could do very
long term testing with it, and you get another
vengeance. You could get hourly results, which helps
you to track variations when we're talking in a little
while about how much radion levels vary over time.
And this type of detection equipment will help you determine
what those variations are. They're very precise, and
another advantage is that they are available. The results
are available immediately and on site this advantages associated with
continuous working level monitor or the cost you're looking at
about$8000. That may have come down a little
bit late a little bit lately, but these two
piece of equipment right here you're looking at about$8000
and it does require skilled operator at this time.
E think I'll take a little break. Everybody stretch
their legs and so forth and we come back.
We'll talk about the when I was talking about with
variations with things that determine, um, instantaneous levels
of Radan. Okay, Okay. As I alluded
to before, right on levels fluctuate greatly over time
and weeks, months, seasons and so forth,
and it Z there's a lot of factors that affect
this. I'll go ahead and go over some of
these. First of all, the soul soul content
of the raid on precursors that is uranium and radium
have to be present, or at least available in
order for the raid on gas to be available.
It's a natural. Like I said, it's part
of the decay chain. So if the home does
not have either high enough Radan content, I mean
uranium radium content. Or if, through fractures and
so forth in the Rock there's none available, then
you won't have a raid on concentration problem. Another
thing is soil permeability and porosity. Um, if
the soil is a very safe, for instance,
tight clay type soil and so forth, that tends
to help because the gas is less permissible. It
is not not able thio permeating and so forth,
so that tends to help out someone to, Of
course, if it's less if it's more preferable and
more porous than it makes it a, um,
the raid on gas more available, dropping atmospheric pressure
. Azad Pacific pressure drops, uh, soil gas
is in general, tend to emanated a higher rate
, and Radan gas being a soil gas, acts
the same way. So is that drops, you
may find the instantaneous levels to be higher wind speed
and direction, believe it or not, have a
lot to do with it. It tends to set
up what's called chimney effect somewhat, and depending on
how you open windows and so forth. It also
can affect that, uh, soil caps, for
instance. For example, ice or patio so forth
, and so on. A lot of rainfall at
times when there's a lot of rainfall or a lot
of ice or snow or something like that on the
ground, gas tends toe, find its path of
least resistance, and if it's dry underneath the home
, you'll see radion levels increase. There, you
see in higher emanation right there. Um, the
chimney effect. What I spoke to before about this
is a situation is you heat the house, um
, air tends to rise as it's heated, and
as it rises, you get. It creates a
draw, if you will kind of like a vacuum
cleaner on the soil underneath the house, so you'll
see higher levels of Radan when the home is heated
. The ventilation rate, Um obviously the higher the
number of their turnovers per period time the lower the
the level of Radan domestic water content. Early on
, there was a lot of talk about this.
Maybe quite a factor now turns out probably lesser of
a factor that was initially anticipated. However, if
you do have gross levels of contamination, very high
levels of contamination in the well water. Um,
then, uh, you could have an indoor air
quality problems resulting from the typical conversion is about 10,000
to 1. So for every 10,000 PICO curies per
leader of Radan in your well water, um,
you get about a contribution of about one PICO curies
per leader into the air quality. I'll mention if
you have a municipal type, um, water supply
. You don't have anything to worry about because,
like I said, this is a, uh,
an inert gas. Chemically inert. It doesn't mix
or doesn't react very well with anything. So it
tends to de gas from water very, very easily
, and this will wash. Supplies are a rated
anyway, So if that happens, if ever was
a problem, it's not gonna be a problem in
the home. Diurnal variation. This really is a
description about Wait. Typically, humans work. Uh
, the highest level of rate on you'll find typically
is in the morning after the home has been closed
up all night long and things that kind of settled
down as people get up, start moving around,
opening, shutting doors and so forth way see a
dramatic decrease in the levels of Radan. Believe it
or not, title forces full moon has an effect
on radar. It's just like anything else, just
like the tides and so forth and so on.
The gravitational force of the moon tends to draw store
gasses out. So in four moon, we have
actually our highest levels of radar. Three elevation in
the house sampled, um, provided you have a
heat distribution system that is not a forced air system
does not have a return, if you will.
Then you'll find a about a tenfold difference between each
level of in the home. It'll be safe.
It was, uh, 100 in the basement.
You could see about 10 on the first floor and
one on the second floor. If you have ah
, heat distribution system that has a force, their
system will return in your basement, Say then,
Um, basically, you'll have ah homogeneous mixture and
more or less even concentrations of radio of Radan throughout
the house. And the last one is House video
Secret sees. This one is all encompassing, and
this would describes everything else the way the House was
constructed, the way it meets the ground and so
forth and so on. Really, it's all in
any particular home. It's and it's a very random
situation. So anyway, I guess the point trying
to make is that, uh, anything that you
think might affect the instantaneous levels of Radan in the
home will. So, um, this is Ah
, slide. I'll have to apologize for the quality
. I took it out of the Citizens guy,
which I know some of you picked up the break
. Um it talks about Thea EPA's, um,
guidelines for remediation and also how quickly you should take
thes thes remedies. First of all, if the
results are about 1.0 working levels or 200 PICO curies
or higher, it says the exposures in this ranger
among the highest observed in homes. I might also
point out that's about what was typical in the Iranian
minds. Um, they said they recommend that you
take action within several weeks. And if this is
not possible, you should determine in consultation with the
appropriate state or local health radiation protection officials. If
temporary relocation is appropriate in the Watchers home, they
had 20. Like I said, 2700 PICO curies
per leader and they were relocated immediately for about three
or four months, while they did immediate remediation on
that. It's interesting to point out also that,
you know when when when we started hearing about the
Stanley Watchers home in Pennsylvania and also some other homes
, they weren't quite that bad, but pretty closed
up in in that area in New Jersey and Pennsylvania
, New York and that reading pronged area, which
is the geological formation that they've attributed these levels to
, um, way knew we had uranium and so
forth in the States. So we decided, was
probably best for us to start looking rather than somebody
else find the problem. And nobody had ever,
ever thought that the very first house that they found
a problem was gonna be the worst. Turns out
that no one's ever found anything close to the levels
that were found in the Stanley Watchers home, so
That's kind of make us feel a little bit better
. Uhh. Yeah, I'm gonna talk about that
in a minute. We talk about some of the
construction things, um, the next, the next
level that they say, uh, to take action
says if your results are about 0.1 to 1 or
from 20 to 200 people curious per leader, it
says exposure in this range are considered greatly above average
on. You should undertake action, reduce it as
far below 20 people curious per liter, appoint one
working levels and do this within several months. So
as you see is the levels go down their recommendations
for the amount of time that you have before you
do anything about it goes up if you come on
down and says if they're about to to appoint one
or between four and 20 PICO curies per leader,
um, that that these air considered above average and
the recommends you take action within a few years.
So as you see it, this is definitely a
long term exposure risk association type situation. Other words
, um, it is not an acute radiation problem
, but over an extended period of times over several
years, it concentrated levels. That's when they have
the increased risk for the, um to develop lung
cancer, it says. If your results are about
to working levels or four people curious per leader,
it says explosion the stranger considered average or slightly above
average. Um, it says although exposures in this
range do presents some risk of lung cancer, reductions
of levels may be difficult and sometimes impossible. And
that's been demonstrated time and time again. Um,
if you have elevated levels above four, you can
be relatively, uh, easily sure that you can
get it down before a little bit below, but
not very much. Wow, Next thing I want
to talk about is our study, the Virginia Department
of Health. You're a very logical health study that
was done. This is just a copy of the
front of it. I know. I had a
few copies. I wanna apologize. I didn't have
enough for everyone when I left the office Monday.
I just had to get what I could get If
any of you did not get a copy of the
study and would like one you can call me or
anyone else that the at the office. There's another
publications up here that has our toll free number in
it. And in fact, I think even the
citizens God does. So you can call us at
that number. And if you want to write it
down and give it to you now, it Z
1 800 468 No. 138 That's our toll free
Radan hotlines. What we call it, you can
use it to correspond with us or you have any
people to call you with questions and so forth.
You can refer them to us with that number.
Like I said, we, um yeah, Okay
, Yeah, it's 1 800 468 0138 We,
um like I said when we started hearing reports from
New Jersey and New York and Pennsylvania and other areas
about Radan, we knew we had uranium. We
decided we'd better take a look at ourselves. So
in January of 1986 we embarked on a study that
sampled or surveyed, if you will 725 homes across
the state and the intent of this study, or
I guess the objectives we're Thio first of all,
screening statistically significant number of randomly selected homes in Virginia
for Radan decay product concentrations exceeding EPA guidelines and to
to determine to the to determine the extent to which
Radan causes a health hazard. In Virginia, there's
been a lot of pressure put on us based on
this study, to say, Well, what does
this mean for my area? They knew we got
good geographical dispersion. We did, Ah, lot
of sampling and so forth, and just about every
locality or shouldn't say a lot. A few samples
in just about every locality on what this enabled us
to do was to get a snapshot for the state
. What it does not enable us to do is
determined. What is the risk in my county,
or what is the risk in my local health district
? What is the risk of having elevated rate on
levels in my neighborhood? We just can't answer those
questions. This study was not designed to do that
, even though, like I said, we've we've
had a lot of pressure to do something, so
I want to caution people about that. If you
get a copy of the study, it is broken
out into counties. But, um, you really
can to draw any conclusions about that. This is
designed, like I said, to give us an
idea of what what the situation was for the state
and whether or not we needed to doom. Or
obviously we found that we have. But but based
on this one study wanted to caution people to use
this to say I know there was an article that
was shown to me earlier today that said that Roanoke
was safe and Pennsylvania County was a risk. Well
, I don't know where I know where they got
that information from, but it was taken completely out
of context. Thea, like I said, these
were the objectives of the study and there were basically
three main conclusions that were drawn from our study,
first of all homes in the time water area,
or less likely, a less likely to have a
problem with elevated concentrations of radon decay products and homes
and either the Piemonte region or the mountain region.
This is about as far as we could go assed
faras trying to track down. You know who is
at risk and who wasn't the reason we went ahead
and drew this conclusion basically because we did extensive testing
in all the regions we found, um, virtually
no levels of elevated raid on, uh, concentrations
. Once you get into the coastal plain areas,
which makes sense, way got a lot of settlement
there, Um and, um so very little bedrock
and so forth available. And with a 3.8 day
half life on Radan, it just simply takes longer
for that gas to migrate before it undergoes decay.
So it really was not available to the home.
So maybe Radan gas far down in the ground.
But it just takes too long to travel through all
those sentiments before it decays out into into particular daughter
products. The second conclusion was that homes with basements
are more likely to have a problem with elevated concentration
than those without. This kind of is logical.
If you figure you're digging down into the earth and
putting a room down there, um, it z
a little bit more likely that you're gonna have higher
levels of radon concentrations free will. Well, anytime
you like, I said, you dig down into
the earth and you don't take any sort of precautions
. Um, like I say with moisture barriers or
vapor barriers and so forth. Then you would expect
to find a little bit higher levels. Not to
mean that you're gonna have elevated levels, but you
. Would you be at higher risk of having elevated
levels. Um, and the third conclusion we had
this has given some scientifically controversial assumptions. What I'm
talking about there was when I said that way,
assume linearity of risk. Um, some people have
a little problem with that. But assuming that those
controversial assumption, at least for a minority of Virginians
the risk associated with elevated concentrations of raid on decay
products appear to be important if nothing is done to
reduce the exposure. That's why the Health Department is
basically come out with recommendations. People have their homes
tested in 1987 session of the General Assembly. Um
, they directed the Secretary of Human Resource is to
cause a study to be conducted regarding the problems associate
with Radan guests. Holmes. This was as a
direct result of a lot of media attention that was
drawn, uh, in Northern Virginia D C.
Area from some things that were going on up there
at the time and also from a lot of public
, uh, publicity and so forth is related.
The fact that our study was going on report of
the raid on Task Force that was said it was
submitted to the General Assembly on December 1st 1987 with
the following recommendations, and I'll just go ahead and
read these off to you. First of all,
the task force recommends that the Virginia Department of Health
should continue to provide to the public reliable information about
Radan. The task force encourages persons living in or
purchasing homes in the Piedmont and mountain regions of the
state to test their homes and to avail themselves to
information about Radan. It says. Due to a
lesser risk of elevated right on levels and homes in
the coastal plain, those persons living in this region
or who are concerned about health effects of indoor radon
concentrations should have their homes tested. Members of Radan
related industries should take responsibility for becoming and remaining informed
about this topic. The Virginia Department of Health should
continue to pursue the results and evaluate the progress of
any ongoing rate on research, and that the Department
of Housing and Community Development should pursue and evaluate all
new developments in the area of home construction techniques designed
to minimize Radan exposure will facilitate raid on mitigation in
order to determine the advisability of future changes to the
Virginia uniforms statewide building code. That kind of brings
us into the next subject or topic of mitigation.
Now we could talk days and days on mitigation techniques
and so forth. This is an area. There's
a lot of research going on. In fact,
I know there are some people here at Virginia Tech
that are doing a lot of research along these areas
, and it's ongoing. But basically there are three
, um, three concepts are three ways generally,
by which you can reduce Radan um, Radan contamination
levels. First of all, you can divert rate
on away before it enters the structure or some techniques
that have been used quite extensively. We commonly referred
to a sub slab ventilation. It's really fairly simple
, assuming that you have, um, a good
base of gravel underneath the concrete that was poured in
the basement or underneath the concrete was poured. If
you have like a house, it's like what they
called slab on grade on what you were talking about
with the um trial level or the split level type
house. A lot of times, the lowest level
is slab on grade, which have a concrete floor
down there. Well, the contract to build the
helm is supposed to put a a layer of gravel
down there, typically about four inches of gravel for
moisture to be able to drain away and so forth
from the house. If that's done, then that
creates a nice little air. Um, pocket,
if you will, where you can draw three.
Gas is off before they have a chance to home
. So, typically, what they do because they
drill a hole down into the through the slab through
the concrete, put your plastic pipe and so forth
and then out inside the home, either out in
the backyard somewhere they could put it underground, pipe
it out back or on top of the house.
They'll put a fan and continue to draw um,
gas. Draw these gasses out of that area before
it has a chance to enter the home. It's
called sub slab ventilation. Um, come to find
out what they've done so far, It turns out
it's a very effective a way to do it,
and it's not really all that expensive. The highest
thing I've had reported to me, and I'm not
sure exactly how accurate is. But the highest thing
that I've been aware of is about$1600 to correct
the problem, and that was a very high level
. Very, very big problem. A Sfar as
relative relative with the radion levels. Um, another
way that you basic mitigation, I guess, is
to play some sort of barrier between the soil and
the living space. Um, and this kind of
goes back toe. Also, the thing I talked
about before with the one of the raid on Task
Force recommendations for the building code people to maybe get
involved because it turns out that polyethylene sheets, if
they're thick enough in there, don't have holes knocked
in and so forth while you're applying it. Or
excellent barriers for radon gas or any sort of vapors
or gas isn't you Will. And so um,
either after the home is constructed, if you have
across space, it's easily available to you to get
under there and put the plastic up, or while
the houses being constructed, which is another point we
made things is something that's very easily and fairly inexpensively
done. I think a roll of five mil polyethylene
sheets is runs about$60 and plenty to do a
house, maybe even do a couple of houses.
Um, another way to do it is increased ventilation
, and I have the word caution up there because
it was a situation where in New Jersey, it's
kind of interesting story where they had found a home
that had about 3.5 working levels. And so they
went in and a ZA project. The EPA went
in and spend some money, did some research and
so forth and got it down to below four people
Crucial leader or below point to working levels and then
the local officials. I don't know if they were
like county officials or congressman or whatever. But local
elected officials wanted to have a press conference at this
home to show how he had gotten money into his
district and so forth and so on. And lo
and behold, they did some grab sampling at the
time and found that the levels were up to 7.5
working levels and what had happened was after they had
spent all the money and done all the work to
reduce these levels. The person who lived there had
opened on Lee one window in the house and the
down wind side, and as a result, set
up negative pressures in that house. Basically turn that
house into a vacuum cleaner. And they were.
The gas was just flowing out of the ground.
So I said, I wanna caution people about ventilation
. It's not as simple as going and opening up
some windows, because you can actually do more harm
than good if you're not careful. Yeah, the
Bureau of Ecological Health. That group in Richmond has
, uh, done one other thing with regard Thio
mitigation. Um, and that is we've developed a
list of companies who have claimed to do mitigation work
at this time. There's no one regulating this industry
or, I guess, specifically to Radan remediation.
And so it is a definitely a buyer. Beware
buyer beware problem with that. So what we do
is we've we've only we've developed a list of companies
who have made a positive, approached US numbers if
they have called us and said that I'm in this
business on How do I go about getting regulator?
What have you? All we do is we created
a list of those people and we recommend way.
Don't recommend anyone. Um, but we send out
that list of people who are inquire about having their
homes tested, and then that way we're not able
to recommend anyone we don't recommend or endorse anyone.
Um, like I said, our goal really in
our responsibility has been to provide information. We do
that by printing by distributing printed material. Have examples
of those here that I'm gonna talk a little bit
about. We also maintain a toll free Radan hotline
. And then we've been started making presentations like I've
done today. These publications that I have here,
first of all, the first ones the citizens got
to Radan was developed by the EPA. We distribute
that one really? Answer the questions about what is
Radan and why are we concerned about it? We
have enough available for just about anyone that calls a
Z extension agents. If you would like to get
Mork copies of these to distribute, you can call
our officers and the toll free number or you could
just refer those people to our number if you'd like
, and we can send them out to him.
We continue to send this out. We man that
hotline during office hours and then after normal office hours
, we have recording that has them basically instructed to
call us back. Or if they just want information
, they can leave their name and number, and
we'll send it out off the tape. Some other
things. We have radar reduction methods of homeowners.
God, it's just that it's a homeowner's guide to
give you some basic concepts about remediation that helps you
to ask the right questions of the contractor. The
EPA Radan Radan pricing efficiency report is a report that
was a program was developed EPA for Radan testers.
Again, these people are not regulated either. However
, if they volunteer for this program is the quality
assurance program and they more or less past, they
get the right answer. If you will thin their
name is published in this publication, then when people
call them and say, How do I have my
home tested? We simply send out that list the
way we don't recommend anyone, but these people have
at least participated in a program and showing at least
once that they that they are able to test for
rate out. And they do get the right answers
. Radan reduction techniques for detached houses is a is
more of a technical guidance for people who are contractors
and so forth, or perhaps to do it yourself
or type person who wants to do some mitigation that's
available. Um, right on reduction techniques and new
construction is very similar to the one for detached houses
. It's an interim. God is a little out
of work that's being developed for that. But these
are also available for the do it yourselfer who's building
someone doing building his own home or contracts and so
forth. The measures that you can take, um
, assuming that you're gonna have a problem numbers before
the House has ever constructed removal of right on and
household water is a new one that we have.
Um, it's mainly developed for states up in the
Northeast, in New Hampshire and Maine and so forth
. We have, ah, considerably more of a
problem with groundwater right on contamination. Radan Task Force
report to the General Assembly is the one that I've
talked about our recommendations. I don't have any more
of those available to me today. But if anyone
would like to have that report for those of you
who don't have it, it's the thicker one here
. I can get this to you. So you
just give me a call or give any of us
to call there on the hotline. Same way with
the Health Department survey and the mitigation contractors. This
I think I have still have plenty of those up
here. Um, there are some things that we
don't do that we are requested to do. And
I want to mention basically there, too. Two
things One is we don't recommend companies whether it be
for testing devices or for mitigation, simply because the
product liability and so forth and so on. Um
, since this is not a regulated industry in any
way, we do not recommend anyone. We try
to provide people with enough information so that they could
make an intelligent choice. And another thing we don't
do is we do not do Radan test per request
that simply something that we just simply do not have
. The resource is for our entire bureau consists of
about eight people, and along with all the other
responsibilities that I mentioned before, we now have Radan
. And so, as you can see, we're
stretched pretty thin. We're kind of in a wait
and see attitude right now. The General Assembly to
see, based on the raid on Task Force,
report just what they want to do about Radan,
and perhaps we will get a program going. But
this time we've done everything. Everything that we've done
at this point has been basically our own budget.
We spend like$192,000 last year on Radan, of
which there was nothing funded for the last thing that
I wanted. Thio mentioned with some typical are just
a couple of questions that we get and then,
uh, open it up for questions. First of
all, our Children at higher risk than adults.
Well, unfortunately, yes, they are. And
for a couple of reasons, First of all,
as I mentioned before, alluded to before. Um
, it's assumed that Children, especially very young Children
, spend a lot more time in in their home
. Then say adults do or say older Children dio
. And if you have elevated levels of Radan concentration
. Then, as a result, they're at higher
risk. Also, the younger you are the mawr
. Rapidly, the sales reproduce, obviously, when
you're growing, and so as you sales reproducing more
rapidly. And if you're in the elevated level of
Radan concentration than you're increasing your risk because MAWR of
these very sensitive cells are available for mutation. Second
question that we have a lot about is what about
really don in real estate transactions. This is something
that we're all working on and kind of scrambling with
right now. But essentially, it's very thing.
There's some things that we need to caution people about
. First of all, um, the type of
test is typically done to determine if a house has
a problem with a raid. On with a real
estate transaction is a screening test, and and so
we need to caution people that it is just a
screening test. And like I mentioned before, that
answer is very specific questions, and it's only an
indication. So the problems are with people trying of
real estate or killing real estate transactions based on a
screening test. It really needs to be done based
on annual um averaging type test and evaluative type test
. But then again, that doesn't fit in with
the real estate business too well, because typically,
you don't have a year from the time you put
your house on the market until it's to be sold
. So these are some things that need to be
worked out. Some states are looking into looking into
situations where they set up automatically set up an escrow
account where they do the test. If the test
comes to screen, test comes out low. You
don't have a problem in this, goes released.
If it has an elevated level based on your screening
test that takes some of that money to do,
they could go ahead and close. I guess if
they will on the transaction and then they could do
an evaluative test over the next several months. If
that comes high, then maybe some of the money
made available for remediation. So that's the way some
of the states are starting to deal with. It
s so far right now. It's something that the
real estate market in real estate interests are trying to
deal with. And so I guess I'm trying to
say is that we just caution people that thes screening
tests are only designed to give an indication and not
to give you a firm number with any other questions
. What geologic formations this series anyway, you know
, certainly a lot going on. There's a lot
of work going on with that. I'm not a
geologist, but the oh wrong area, for instance
, is it was really not real high uranium content
, if you will. But it is very porous
and very fractured granite and so forth. And so
there's a lot of soil. Gas is moving around
anyway. But, um, uneven. Bigger question
is that has been attempted in Canada. It took
him about 10 years, and they spent I don't
know how much money in excess of a billion dollars
trying to determine what was trying to map out what
were high risk areas in what were lower risk areas
. Turns out that things were just too random.
They gave up on that study after about 10 years
and just recommended people have their homes tested. That's
the best way to find out. So it's far
as Virginia goes. There are areas where we know
we have Ah lot of uranium. However, we
also have a lot of clays and so forth in
some of the same areas. So it's kind of
a kind of, uh um area that kind of
canceled each other out. Someone? Yeah. Any
other questions? Just okay, that's in that publication
right here. I was talking about Radan radon progeny
, Proficient report. This thing started off. It
was updated every quarter. Now they're down to an
annual basis every year. That will come out with
a new report with the companies who offering these tests
. One thing that we caution people about if you
want to distribute this, um, one thing that
we caution people about is that right now there are
a lot of people who are simply setting themselves up
, his distributors, not necessary labs. And so
what we do is we tell we encourage people to
call around and get prices, because you may call
one fella and he gives you a price of$25
or something like that. And then all he's gonna
do is call our get in touch with the lab
and buy it from the lab and then send it
to you in other words take his cut. So
we encourage people to call around on this list and
getting the best price. And also, it's a
good idea to ask him if they're actually a distributor
if they if they are the lab. If you're
dealing with the lab, you may even reduce the
amount of time it takes to get results back.
And typically it's gonna be cheaper insulation. That's close
stores, I think. Okay, as far as
the state goes, nothing that I'm aware of,
we've We've reported our task force back to the General
Assembly. We've made that report back to assembly,
but I'm not sure exactly what, um, what
they've done about it, if anything, on the
federal level, however, there are two bills pending
one in the Senate that's in committee and one in
the house that's in committee. Not sure which is
which, but once for about$30 million and over
three years, and the other one's for$19.4 million
. And what they're designed to do is mainly thio
azi aid to state programs and so forth for the
dissemination of information to inform citizens about the hazards associated
with rate on gas and I know on the Senate
bill version Senator Warner is one of the sponsors of
that bill. So we're kind of anxiously waiting,
I guess, to see what's gonna happen with that
. Thank you. Okay, So what I think
for his excellent presentation here and a couple last things
that I wanted. Thio go over here. Is
what? How you anticipate using this information here today
? Um, I'm assuming that one use is the
cards, letters and phone calls. What other ways
do you anticipate using this? Or interview planning Any
special interest meetings. So just okay, his replaces
because it's hitting the meeting headlines of Radan relations that
called Will the real story. Sure. New places
and radio Short radio shorts. Yes. Thank you
. Ohh. Yes. Uhh. Any other uses
? Okay, I this may or may not be
in the area of the way you work with your
audiences, but I think clearly there is a need
, uh, for real estate agents to be informed
on this, whether that's our function or whether that's
the function of the board realtors, But you might
be encouraging them to do something along that line.
Uh, loan officers, uh, suppose somebody finds
out that there is a high concentration of raid on
in this house. And how is that going to
in fact impact upon the willingness of this lender to
write a mortgage on that house? Uh, there's
a lot of room for misinformation there and ideas.
People get into that. Here's an area or a
category of houses that eyes likely tohave high rate on
concentration. And yet, from everything I'm hearing and
from what I heard, Mike today, you can't
predict without the test. Uh, what's going to
be happening? Uh, building inspectors home inspectors,
Uh, and perhaps just generally Homebuyers and home sellers
all getting in this transaction situation. But now the
next step after you get this programming information out there
were required to do some evaluation and reporting on this
kind of thing. So what kinds of things might
be reported? Now we've talked about the lung cancer
danger. I don't think we can attempt to go
quite so far as to say that we have prevented
lung cancer or 20 years from now. I think
they're too many intervening variables, and that gets much
beyond what I think we're capable of doing. But
what I think we can be looking at is perhaps
as a result of your homemakers meeting how maney in
that group went out and did some in did a
test on their home. Then in that we've clearly
got into some of the Casa indicators there of the
knowledge and awareness, uh, level, uh,
the home testing would be a practice change. And
that's probably one of the things we're going to have
to be reporting against. There are practice adopted.
Uh, it's some action that they took as a
result of that. So there is something else that
we might be looking at collecting some information on.
Do any of you have some ideas? You have
a relationship speaking was a hit. Yes. The
expectation that I think would be an excellent any other
ideas can tell you look like you just Okay,
Well, those uhh I'm pleased that there was so
much interest in this, and maybe you'd like toe
give Mike a hand for his patients. Yeah,
and I think we've used up our time