Assessing cancer risk factors faced by an Ancestral Puebloan population in the North American Southwest.

Ancestral Puebloan people in the North American Southwest suffered high rates of disease, poor health, and early age-at-death. Four individuals with skeletal expressions of cancer were found in a pre-Columbian population in the Taos Valley - Reports of malignant neoplasms in the archaeological record are uncommon and their presence in four of 82 individuals is a high occurrence. This study continues Whitley and Boyer's (2012) research testing whether concentrations of ionizing radiation were sufficiently high to induce cancer and related health issues. Access to a preserved and partly reconstructed subterranean pit structure inhabited between AD 1120 and 1170, allows us to test radon concentrations in a residential dwelling. This study found radon occurring in high levels, 19.4-20.3 pCi/L (717.8-751.1 Bq/m3) within the structure. Epidemiological reports are inconsistent when linking specific cancers and radon exposure. However, this study can control for many of the confounding factors plaguing other studies, provide unique data that have the potential to initiate dialogue on the etiology of neoplastic disease in the American Southwest, and add new dimensions to the study of the living conditions and health of the Ancestral Puebloans and their descendants.

History of the measurement of radon in central Bohemia.

It is a little surprising, but radon has been measured by our Institute for >50 y. In the first phase this was carried out in underground mines (up to the present day) but more and more attention has been paid to domestic dwellings and NORM workplaces. The number of the measurements (grab sampling underground, SSNTDs application) was relatively high. To the routine work of the Institute is added research and calibration for radon measuring organisations. Since the formation of the Czech Republic, our previous institution was reformed by the State Office for Nuclear Safety and is one of the two organisations whose main task is, among others, radon measurement.

Residential radon and lung cancer: end of the story?

The earliest evidence of increased lung cancer risk associated with radon came largely from studies of highly exposed underground miners. In the United States, concerns about residential exposures became prominent in the early 1980s with the identification of the Watras home, which had remarkably elevated radon concentrations. By then, the problem of indoor radon was already recognized in Europe and the first epidemiological studies on indoor radon had been reported. The concern about the risk of indoor radon motivated a series of case-control studies of residential radon and lung cancer in the United States, Canada, China, and a number of European countries. In 1999, the U.S. National Research Council Committee on the Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation (BEIR VI) weighed the scientific evidence available at that time on this issue and concluded that residential radon was an important contributor to the lung cancer burden and that risks were appropriately estimated by a linear nonthreshold model. Since individual case-control studies have not provided consistent direct evidence of excess lung cancer risk at residential exposure levels, combined analyses of residential radon studies have been undertaken in both North America and Europe. These combined analyses, including the North American pooled analysis described in this issue, represent an important complement to the findings of the miner studies and further support the linear no-threshold model for cancer risk adopted by the BEIR VI Committee and other groups.

The history of radon from a Swedish perspective.

Beginning in the 16th century, what was later found to be radon was thought to be causing sickness among miners. During the first decades of the 20th century, exposure to radon was seen as being healthy. During the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s researchers thought that the gamma radiation in residences could produce genetic damage. It was not until approximately 1970 that a quantitative risk estimate for lung cancer could be calculated for miners, and not until the 1990s that a risk estimate could be established based on epidemiological studies on radon in dwellings and lung cancer.

Seeds of discord: the politics of radon therapy in Canada in the 1930s.

In the early twentieth century, the therapeutic use of radon gas became an accepted medical practice. "Radium emanation" plants were established in many parts of North America to supply radon seeds to physicians. In Canada, these plants were usually established as part of state-supported cancer programs, creating concern among the medical profession, which had hitherto directed cancer treatment. This article explores how issues surrounding the ownership and distribution of radon played out in two Canadian provinces, Manitoba and Ontario. The main focus is an analysis of a computerized database created from more than two thousand radon order forms, dating from 1933 to 1940, preserved in the Archives of Ontario, which reveals interesting information about patients and the uses of radon in the 1930s, as well as discrepancies between policy and practice that illuminate the medical politics of the era. Although the radon seeds were intended for use in the government-supported central cancer clinics, they were widely distributed to practitioners throughout Ontario, and many patients received treatment for noncancerous conditions. These discrepancies are explored in the context of the struggles over cancer policy between the government and the Ontario medical profession. The article also shows how similar conflicts evolved in Manitoba. Finally, the distribution of radon is linked to the public acceptance of medical radiation despite contemporary reports of harm.

[From the beginnings of radon therapy]. / GESCHICHTE DER MEDIZIN. Aus den Anfängen der Radontherapie.

The renaissance of the radon therapy in several countries since the end of the Second World War is made the occasion for a review to the beginnings of this special form of radiotherapy. Initially the early history of radioactivity research is described which among others led to the detection of the emanation as daughter product of radium. After this followed the evidence of the emanation as constituent of the natural atmosphere. The establishment of its presence in spring-waters led to the knowledge that there are more than average concentrations of emanation in several mineral springs. In the second part of the article the therapeutic use of the natural radion springs initiated by this is described in its development and importance for Austria (Badgastein, St. Joachimsthal) and Germany (Bad Brambach) up to the beginning of the First World War.