Comment 52939

By Ted Mitchell (registered) | Posted December 10, 2010 at 10:33:10

Before throwing around statistics, you have to take them with a grain of salt. The best way to do that is PYLL - potential years of life lost. For example, a man dying from lung cancer at age 63 (like my father) would have had a life expectancy of 78 years. His death has a weight of 15 years of life lost. Conversely, a 17 year old who dies in a MVC loses 61 years of life expectancy, so the PYLL weighting is 4.1 times greater. If average age at death is dissimilar, you are talking apples and oranges and should not compare these statistics without some kind of correction factor.

Thanks for the info on Home depot Canada - no products for radon are listed on their website, but there are 19 different smoke/CO detectors.

Seems to be no real evidence presented yet as to if and how high radon can be found spuriously in a low radon area, and what kind of incidence we are talking about.

With 12.5 million households in Canada, testing once for radon at $50 means $625 million. And realistically, poor households are not going to do it.

From a public/preventive health perspective, that is a fail. If this is as unpredictable and important as the health minister states, it should be covered like flu shots, and/or required by insurance companies. Either would mean economies of scale and bring the cost way down.

Lung cancer treatment in Canada cost $328 million in 1988, likely a lot more now than just the inflation adjustment.

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