https://www.epa.gov/radon/what-epas-action-level-radon-and-w...
The EPA doesn’t make such creative claims. But the sites that do will also conveniently sell you stuff.
https://radonbegone.com/what-does-your-radon-number-mean/
https://www.nationalradondefense.com/radon-information/radon...
These websites will try to tell you that the average indoor radon level is equivalent to 2.5 cigarettes per day or 66 chest X-rays per year. The EPA doesn’t make that claim though.
Here in Maine about 36.5% of radon test results equal or exceed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) action level of 4 pCi/L, according to the Lung Association’s “State of Lung Cancer” report.
If you own a basement in Maine, you should probably test it!
The biggest risk of smoking one cigarette a day is not that it will give you cancer, it's that it will give you nicotine addiction which will lead to smoking twenty a day and getting cancer. Radon exposure doesn't have that effect.
there are quite many things made much more likely with smoking which would end very deadly but modern medicine has learned to to move into the non deadly if treated in time area, which doesn't mean it it doesn't leaves you with long lasting side effects...
like most cases in my environment of smokers having "likely smoking caused" issues fall under that category (so far, aging/time tends to let you see more death in your environment and I'm not yet that old)
to some degree that is exactly the thing
by smoking you add a risk
and the more ways you add risk through your live the more likely you will die an early death
it's just basic statistics
and for the same reason you will find someone who does add all the risks but somehow still dies with 90+, if your sample size is large enough and factors complicated enough you are pretty much guaranteed to find some pretty big outliers
but realistically speaking it a pretty bad idea to assume you are such an outlier, but many people tend to ("basically") do exactly that (due to an combination of subconsciously avoiding reality and simply not thinking things through)
Smoking for 40 years that would be 5 months at 1 a day or 17 years at 40 a day.
I think that's all consistent with what you said: 2 packs a day and you usually, but by no means always, don't make it to retirement at ~66. Five months is enough that I'd take some care to avoid it, though.
[0] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1117323/
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/dec/30/single-cigar...