Cancer Risk Cited : Radon: Can Ill Get Well in the Pits?

BOULDER, Mont. —  They come hobbling on crutches. Others are in wheelchairs. Most walk without assistance. All share a common quest.

They are in search of a medical miracle that they are told lies within the depths of old uranium mines--a natural radioactive gas with such curative powers that the crippled are said to walk and the blind made to see.

“I was in bed three months and couldn’t move. I come here, I was in a wheelchair,” said Lauisa Wiggs, 71, from the Bay Area city of Concord, who first visited the Free Enterprise Radon Health Mine five years ago. “I think I was here one week and started to walk.”

Seeking Relief

Like Lauisa Wiggs, the elderly and desperate hope to find relief--perhaps even a cure--for arthritis, bursitis, lupus, asthma and even cancer by breathing cold mine air heavily laden with radon, an invisible, odorless radioactive gas.

But medical doctors and others dismiss radon therapy as bogus and say that while people may temporarily feel better, the relief is psychosomatic.

“The problem is that arthritis is a progressive disease,” said Floyd Pennington of the Atlanta-based Arthritis Foundation. “Unless you do something to intervene with the disease’s progression, it will continue,” he said. “Radon will not interfere with the disease process or do anything to stop it, as far as we can tell.

“Many of these people . . . would have got better by staying home and sitting on their front porch and drinking lemonade.”

Radiation Very Real

At the same time, others warn that the radiation in the mines is very real.

The mines first gained a reputation for their supposed radon cures in the 1950s, long before the dangers of radon gas were widely known. Increasingly, however, radon is being viewed as the No. 1 environmental health risk in the nation. Earlier this year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ranked the cancer risks posed by 31 environmental problems. Radon in homes tied for first place with worker exposure to hazardous chemicals. By comparison, outdoor air pollutants that form smog in the Los Angeles Basin ranked 22nd.

Radon in homes is thought to cause 5,000 to 20,000 lung cancer deaths each year. Yet many visitors will double their annual exposure to radon in just eight days by following the mine owners’ recommendation to make the descent three times a day until they have spent 32 to 40 hours in the radon-infused air.

Radon concentrations are so high at the Free Enterprise Radon Health Mine--one of five mines in the Boulder vicinity--that the effect on visitors is like smoking 15 packs of cigarettes during their stay, based on EPA risk estimates.

Despite growing concerns about radon, visitors to the tunnels are not usually informed about the risks, however small, and mine employees admit that they understand little about radiation. Radon levels in mines routinely exceed Montana’s voluntary exposure limits, but state officials say they do not have the time or personnel to do more.

In addition, infants and children are admitted to the tunnels without question--some of them without any apparent health problems--despite concern by the state official in charge of overseeing the mines.

The tunnels have become a kind of Lourdes of the West, drawing thousands from throughout the United States and Canada afflicted by agonizing and crippling arthritis and other maladies. Many visitors return year after year convinced of the mines’ salubrious effects.

“When we got home, I was telling people about it and they’d say, ‘Well, it’s in your head,’ ” said Adolph Monard, 67, of Anadarto, Okla. “I said I don’t care if it’s in my feet, as long as it helps you. And it really did me.”

On a recent day, 85 feet below the surface and deep in the well-lit recesses of the Free Enterprise Mine, dozens of visitors--most of them retirees--were exchanging stories about their grandchildren and playing cards. They are waiting for relief.

The Walking Dog Theory

“The whole thing might be an old wives’ tale,” said Lawanda Redding, 64, of Sun City, Ariz. But it was clear that she thought there was more to it. “People bring their dogs here and they carry them in,” she said. She said the dogs walk out on their own. “Now, you know a dog doesn’t know why it came here, so there must be something to it,” she enthused.

“How long are you supposed to stay in here?” one asked.

“Oh, they’ll (mine operators) tell you when your time’s up.”

About 10 miles away, the rhythmic sound of dripping water echoed through the tunnel of the Merry Widow Health Mine. An elderly woman was carrying a plastic bucket in which she intended to soak her aching hands.

There was laughter and good-natured joking. Seated on a wooden bench, five visitors had rolled up their pant legs and were dangling their feet in a pool of cold water with traces of radon, claimed to have healing powers. From time to time, they lifted up a foot and crossed it over the other leg and massaged it. Their feet were turning red from the chill.

“Try it. You’ve got to try it,” one encouraged another. “Did you bring your cup?” The cup is for drinking water.

“It can’t hurt you,” her husband replied.

Helen O’Neill, who with her husband owns the Merry Widow mine, told of a woman in her 50s whose sight was restored. The unidentified woman reportedly had surgery that partially restored vision in one eye, but she later lost her sight in the other eye. “She was washing her eyes with the water. A week after she was here, she got her vision back,” O’Neill said.

Darryl Parker, the 23-year-old manager of the Free Enterprise Radon Health Mine and grandson of the man who opened the mine to visitors in 1952, said: “It’s my own conviction that radon therapy is a very viable, powerful therapy in conquering pain and suffering. It’s more than an article of faith. . . . Obviously, people are claiming miraculous relief. And even if it is all in the head, what difference does it make?”

The difference, say scientists, is that visitors are increasing, however slightly, their risk of lung cancer. Anthony V. Nero Jr. of Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories, a leading authority on radon, said the radiation dose from visiting the mines just once in a lifetime is “relatively modest.” But many visitors return to the mines year after year.

“If you spend a lot of time in those spas, you definitely have a real danger of lung cancer. They are, in fact, mines. It was from such environments that uranium miners were found to have lung cancer,” Nero said.

The EPA has said that just a week’s radon exposure of the magnitude found at one of the five mines here will increase an individual’s chance of lung cancer during his or her lifetime from 0.5% to 2.4%.

Yet The Times found that visitors for the most part are not informed of the risks.

Operator’s Claims

“To boggle the people’s mind with that is irrelevant,” Parker said. Indeed, one Free Enterprise promotional brochure claimed that “radon is biologically harmless . . . when inhaled through the lungs or absorbed from radon water through the intestines,” a claim that is disputed by radon authorities.

Nonetheless, some mines--although not the Free Enterprise--require customers to waive their right, and the right of their survivors, to sue if health problems develop later.

The health mines are a virtually unregulated business, despite a widespread belief among visitors that Montana keeps a close watch. One visitor, for example, said he believed the state monitored radon levels “every few days.” The fact is that measurements are usually not taken more than once a year.

Larry L. Lloyd, director of Montana’s Environmental Sciences Division, said the state’s monitoring is “fairly minimal. I don’t have a set time because, frankly, we’re so understaffed. I get up there when there’s a reason.”

“We do not get involved in the claims either of the mine operators or any of the visitors. That is strictly not our business,” said Lloyd.

The state’s role is limited to inspecting the mines for structural integrity and asking mine owners to comply with a voluntary guideline that attempts to limit a visitor’s radon exposure to 10% of the annual exposure permitted uranium miners.

But the 10% limit is routinely exceeded. At the Free Enterprise Mine, visitors’ radon exposure sometimes is more than twice that limit. Radon levels at the other four mines are lower.

Still, Lloyd said, he is not concerned. “It’s like 55 m.p.h. It doesn’t mean perfectly safe at 54 and die at 56.”

Moreover, he said that most of the visitors are in their 60s, 70s and 80s.

“Let’s say a 70-year-old individual goes in and if we did not control his (radiation) exposure, the chances of him living long enough to get lung cancer from breathing the radon is probably pretty minimal,” Lloyd said.

Lloyd said he would be concerned about younger visitors. “If we started seeing school-age children going into the mines, I think we might start looking for an extension of our cooperative arrangements.”

Yet mine operators and visitors report that infants, children and teen-agers often visit the mines. “There have been people here who have brought babies less than a year old,” retired Merry Widow Health Mine employee Kathy Summers, 75, said.

Colleen Gibson, who works at the Sunshine Radon Health Mine, reported: “We have three children here right now from 11 to 16. One has allergies, one has lupus and a couple are not bothered by anything. They’re just along for the ride.”

The state’s laissez-faire attitude is reflected by the repeated failure of the Free Enterprise Mine to take adequate steps to protect its own employees from excessive radiation.

For seven years, the state said, radon levels in the mine’s reception room--which sits atop the vertical mine shaft--have exceeded federal worker radiation safety standards. In June, 1986, radiation levels were recorded at more than five times acceptable daily levels.

But the state allowed operations to continue on the condition that the room be ventilated until additional steps were taken.

Mine employees who are called upon by visitors for assurances appear to be largely ignorant of the risks, and not altogether conversant with radiation. “I don’t understand it all that much,” said Helen O’Neill of the Merry Widow Health Mine in Basin.

Mine owners usually avoid making medical claims themselves. Indeed, the Federal Trade Commission ordered the Free Enterprise mine several years ago to cease making such claims. But the mines make wide use of the testimonials of paying customers by publishing their reports in advertising brochures.

“It doesn’t matter to these people why it works,” said Parker, who charges $128 for 40 hours of visits and offers lifetime memberships for $690 a couple. “All they care about is the testimonials of others. It’s sort of like a religion. If it helps somebody else and they hear the word-of-mouth praises of it, they’re going to maybe be converted to it.”

Parker, who has a high school education and a choir boy countenance, speaks with the fervor of a convert. To many of the elderly visitors, he comes off as a favorite grandson.

But doctors and trained researchers say Parker’s description of how radon brings about good health is “nonsense.”

Parker’s explanation goes something like this: Radon enters the lungs and then the blood stream, where it gives off alpha radiation. The radiation creates ions in the circulatory system and stimulates cells and the immune system. This, in turn, leads to relief, he says.

“I would not agree with much of what he said,” Jonathan Samet of the University of New Mexico said. Samet is a professor of medicine who has researched the effects of radiation on uranium miners.

He said radon gas is not easily absorbed into the bloodstream.

“I don’t think (it) would in fact increase circulating levels of ions, as he suggested. I’m certainly not aware of data that would support that,” Samet said. “In terms of what we know about radon, uptake and adverse effects, there’s very little reason to expect benefits.”

Informed of the professor’s observations, Parker responded: “He’s got a lot more credibility than I do. What I’m doing is simply conveying theory through my shallow understanding of medicine I’ve been able to assimilate from medical doctors.”

Still, Parker is convinced of radon’s efficacy.

Scientists say that as radon gas decays, it produces a series of short-lived radioactive products called radon progeny, or “daughters.” These daughters, including polonium-218 and polonium-214, emit alpha particles that attach themselves to dust, smoke or surfaces and can be inhaled. They lodge in the lung and radiate the surrounding tissues, which can lead to lung cancer.

Most scientists argue that the effects of radiation are cumulative and that each exposure is added to the last. Given the theory that there is no safe level or threshold of radiation, the scientists say that subjecting visitors to radon when the medical benefits are questionable gives them pause.

Naomi H. Harley, one of the nation’s foremost authorities on radon, said: “It’s a small risk I don’t need if I can avoid it. I avoid unnecessary risk and exposure. I think people should know that there is some risk from going into a mine.” Harley is a researcher at the New York University Medical Center.

The EPA has suggested that homeowners take action to reduce radon when levels reach more than 4 picocuries per liter. A picocurie is a standard unit of radiation measurement and is one-trillionth of a curie. Radon in the health mines usually ranges between 400 and 1,000 picocuries per liter, state measurements have found.

However, radon levels fluctuate widely and no one knows how intense the radiation is from one day to the next. Earlier this month, Parker said, he measured radon concentrations at the Free Enterprise mine as high as 4,278 picocuries per liter. On two successive days, radon concentrations averaged 2,400 picocuries per liter, he said.

By visiting the mines only once in a lifetime and taking the full 40-hour “treatment,” at 1,000 picocuries per liter, the added risk of lung cancer would be one chance in 10,000 for a 60-year-old, based on calculations by the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements.

But many of the visitors come year after year and add to the risk with each descent into the mines. Overall, the risk may seem small. But government regulators have pointed out that they are much larger than the one-in-a-million risk deemed acceptable by the EPA for exposure to toxic chemicals and other pollutants.

Parker and other mine operators appear to be comfortable with the radiation levels. “I just put all my trust in the state health inspector. I assume he knows what he’s talking about. I try my best to enforce everything he has us do because I know it’s for our benefit and our employees’ benefit,” Parker said.

But Lloyd said: “We don’t want to regulate those mines. We have a cooperative arrangement. If we were to regulate them, we would have to issue a license or something, which really kind of then endorses or puts our stamp of approval on the operation, and we don’t want in any way to show that we are endorsing that type of treatment.”

Still, Lloyd said, “I feel that the radiological risk is pretty small. The situation is that people are aware that they’re going in and breathing radioactive gas. I guess my feeling is that they are willing to take some risk in hope of receiving some benefit. It’s something that they willfully do.”