EPA's approach to assessment of radon risk

The Environmental Protection Agency has assessed the potential lung cancer risk to the general population due to radon based on the Agency's general principles of risk assessment. This is the same approach that has been used to assess the impact on public health of other carcinogenic environmental pollutants. This paper describes the application of this approach to radon. This paper includes a description of the method used by the Agency to estimate that 20,000 lung cancer deaths per year may be related to radon exposure. Also presented are the weight-of-evidence for classifying radon as a known human carcinogen and the uncertainties associated with estimating risks from radon exposure. These reflect the extent of the underlying support and context for these estimates