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Comment by acidburnNSA | Hacker News Reader

This is very nearly useless because it doesn't give the range of dose rates they see in tobacco (am I missing them!?). Low radiation doses are normal and natural and have been part of life forever. High doses from concentrated stuff can cause trouble. So what range are we dealing with here!?

When you have detectors capable of seeing a single atom decaying, quantitative dose rates are always required to have a meaningful and useful conversation.

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Incorrect. There is no such thing as safe dose with Radon. You're thinking of gamma rays and 50mSv/year safe limit. You won't find safe limit for Radon. There are guidelines when you should be very concerned, but there is no safe limit.

It decays into radioactive lead, and once we breath it in, it's hard to get rid of, and stays in our bodies.

I have a hard time making sense of this. Would it mean 1 atom of Rn is always fatal for any individual? The fact that it accumulates in the body doesn't mean it is fatal at any dose.

No, of course not, but Radon is highly radioactive and extremely small amounts are enough to measurably elevate your risk of cancer. We’re talking numbers like a few million molecules in a room.

We need to be more specific: Radon is a gas that goes through alpha decay. It is this specific combination that makes it dangerous. The gaseous form enables easy ingestion by breathing and alpha particles are extremely damaging at short ranges - sub-mm in solid matter. The dead outer skin layer is normally able to perfectly absorb alpha particles which make most emitters effectively harmless. Ingested alpha emitters are different as the emitted alpha particle enters living cells immediately. At that point it is a game of chance whether something gets destroyed or altered that is important for cell reproduction. Also, ingested radioactive emitters are impossible to remove from the human body.

> Also, ingested radioactive emitters are impossible to remove from the human body.

I think that’s only true for things we don’t metabolize?

Right. I should have rather said that there are no medical treatments that can remove ingested radioactive emitters in any meaningful way.

Chelation has been used to remove ingested Am, Pu, and Cm. It takes a while, though.

.. but it's also pretty much unavoidable in some places, as it leaks out of the granite in the ground.

It's mapped, in UK, and a standard part of House buying checklists.

Eg https://www.ukradon.org/information/ukmaps .

The regulations use a linear no threshold limit to be safe. But it has not been proven that there is a linear no threshold dose response. So I am not incorrect.

The article is just an informative piece for the general public. Adding more details would clutter the text and add little to non experts. I think that it is a reasonable approach to highlight a risk situation were the clarity of the message is important.

If you want more data a Google search brings more detail:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/24425555_Radioactiv...

Then they may have well just written "Smoking Bad".

If the motivation is to educate people on the dangers of smoking (which they already overestimate due to the fear based anti-smoking campaigns) they should probably tell us why.

The link you give links to http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph6020558

"Radioactivity of Tobacco Leaves and Radiation Dose Induced from Smoking"

The gist:

> In estimating the radiation dose induced from smoking, it was concluded that the annual effective dose to lungs due to inhalation for adults (smokers) averaged to 80 μSv for 226Ra, 67 μSv for 228Ra and 105 μSv for 210Pb, that is 252 μSv in total. The annual effective dose due to 137Cs of Chernobyl origin averaged to about 200 nSv, that is three orders of magnitude lower than that of the naturally occurring radionuclides. The effective dose of 252 μSv per year must be compared with the average worldwide exposure to natural radiation sources due to inhalation 1.26 mSv y−1.

(although the source for the radioactivity is not only fertilizer, but a combination of fertilizer, natural radioactivity, and to a tiny amount Chernobyl fallout. The plants were sampled all over Greece.)

Not all radionuclides are as dangerous as others. As an extreme example the body keeps the level of potassium constant in the body rendering naturally radioactive potassium completely harmless.

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