Home buyers can be forgiven for thinking radon is an outlying topic — until you realize about 25,000 Americans will die of radon-induced lung cancer this year. That’s about twice as many Americans as “assault rifles” murdered in the last decade.
Rather than declaring an emergency, the General Assembly is about to declare open season on Kentucky homes, homeowners, and buyers — with SB 66. It passed March 12 and is waiting for the Governor’s signature to become law, unless Gov. Beshear vetoes it.
SB 66 halts radon protections for Kentucky. It stops radon testing, and then allows mitigation contractors to approve their own work.
It essentially will bring radon testing to dead halt in Kentucky for at least half a year and probably longer, because it fails to provide for any transition from present practice to testing certification, such as customary “grandfathering” of existing businesses and testing professionals.
That would be a public health disaster – in a state that already is years behind the nation in this vital area of home safety and public health. Of the EPA’s roughly 25,000 Americans expected to die of radon-induced lung cancer this year, many of them will be in Kentucky. That is an avoidable calamity, because radon-induced lung cancer is entirely preventable.
Every Kentuckian should be concerned.
No state has more lung cancer than Kentucky. Radon is the second leading cause of lung cancer in the U.S. Put smoking and radon in the same place, and the risks of lung cancer go up 500%. Most of Kentucky’s population lives in a “red zone” of high radon on EPA maps. http://www.epa.gov/radon/pdfs/zonemapcolor.pdf This includes, in particular, the Louisville and Lexington area, because of the soil types there.
Radon testing has saved countless Kentucky lives with existing professionals who have served the public for over a decade. But SB 66 fails to make sure they can stay on the job, and will not leave home buyers and owners in the lurch.
For nearly 15 years, Kentucky radon testers (known as “radon measurement specialists”) have been certified by two national bodies, the National Radon Safety Board (NRSB) and the National Environmental Health Association (NEHA). Both are accepted in practically every state with radon testing licensing or certification similar to Kentucky current law, KRS 211.9101 et seq, enacted in 2011. They also were accepted under Kentucky’s prior certification law (KRS 211.856, 211.857, and 211.858, repealed by 11 RS HB247 in 2011) for over a decade. They have been providing a public health protection that CHFS has not, all those years (despite KRS 211.856-858).
Stopping the radon testing available today by failing to grandfather or transition existing businesses can only harm Kentuckians. A year of ceased or heavily reduced testing means tens of thousands of untested Kentucky homes in areas where radon and lung cancer are prevalent. It also means hundreds of small businesses hurt.
SB 66 also would amend that law (at KRS 211.9117) to allow radon mitigation contractors to approve their own work was successful. This is a potentially deadly mistake.
Eliminating the present’s law’s requirement that mitigation be tested independently is not motivated by any public health concern. It is a serious mistake that will endanger public health. That alone should counsel a veto of SB 66.
Self-approval by contractors is a proven path to abuse and consumer fraud. The risks are literally life-or-death here – a critical public health service – because radon in a home can only be detected by testing. The rewards are zero if SB 66 becomes law with your signature.
Even where the stakes were not life-or-death cancer risks, such as Energy Star certifications for homes, the history is a clear warning. Contractors who certify their own work as successful all too often approve sub-standard work, for various reasons. In the federal Energy Star program, contractors originally were allowed to certify Energy Star requirements had been met. It turned out consumers were stuck with homes that often failed to meet the minimum requirements, even though the builder certified they did. Now, Energy Star protects the public by requiring independent third-party certification that a home meets the basic requirements. Kentucky should likewise protect the public.
Kentucky should continue to require radon mitigation be tested independently – as does the existing law, KRS 211.9117 – rather than allowing public health to be endangered by radon contractors approving their own work. The risk simply is to great, and too grave.
Finally, halting testing and mitigation by existing practitioners and businesses is bad for Kentucky homeowners, bad for small businesses already working to improve public health, and purely an effort by a few mitigators to get a competitive advantage and exclude competition. There is, bluntly, no good reason to make SB 66 law.
There will not be any groundswell of agitation about SB 66. It is a flawed measure, obscured in legislative maneuvering that made it nearly impossible to follow in the General Assembly. It was promoted, below radar, simply to give market share to a small number of radon mitigation contractors who hold sway, at the moment, at CHFS. A mere handful, practically all in the mitigation business, sit on a “Radon Advisory Committee” that had engineered SB 66 for their own interests.
On the other hand, sooner or later, there is very likely to be a groundswell of criticism or scandal if SB66 stops radon testing and then allows mitigation contractors to give a stamp of approval to their own work, defective or not.
Kentucky’s new radon certification should not get off on the wrong foot with SB 66. The Governor should veto it today and protect our citizens from self-serving contractors in this vital area of lung cancer and public health.