SMHS researchers partner with the UND Department of Communication and Grand Forks Public on radon testing<\/p>\n
Evangelist is too strong a word. Although activist doesn\u2019t quite capture it either.<\/p>\n
Whatever the designation, Dr. Gary Schwartz, chair of the Department of Population Health<\/a> at the UND School of Medicine & Health Sciences, acknowledges the zeal with which he tackles the problem of radon in North Dakota.<\/p>\n Indeed, zeal may be just what North Dakota, which ranks among the most radon-dense states in the nation, needs.<\/p>\n \u201cI think radon, in a way, is a huge opportunity for UND because North Dakota has so much of it,\u201d says Schwartz with something of a grimace. \u201cAnd what we\u2019re learning is that it\u2019s probably related to diseases other than lung cancer.\u201d<\/p>\n Radon \u2013 number 86 on the periodic table of the elements \u2013 is a colorless, odorless, naturally-occurring radioactive gas. It emerges from the breakdown of the uranium and thorium embedded in our state\u2019s topsoil. North Dakota has higher levels of ground-based radon, relative to many other states, due to its geological history, wherein bulldozing glaciers brought these elements closer to the Earth\u2019s surface millennia ago. After the glaciers melted and humans began building increasingly well-sealed homes on such a terrain, radon gas levels tended to collect in prairie basements, especially if the homes\u2019 foundations had even small fissures in them.<\/p>\n And as rafts of studies suggest, average levels of 4 picocuries per liter (pCi\/L) and higher are known to increase the risk of at least lung cancer, and likely stroke, says Schwartz, adding that nearly every North Dakota county has an average radon level that exceeds 4 pCi\/L and one out of every 15 homes nationwide has high radon levels.<\/p>\n Steeped in such studies on the effects chronic radon exposure has on cells, tissues, and organ systems, Schwartz means that while the radon-lung cancer connection is well-established, it is very likely that radon contributes to a host of other conditions, from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) to stroke to some forms of leukemia.<\/p>\n \u201cIf radon contributed even modestly to stroke or COPD, that\u2019s incredibly important to know, so there are a lot of reasons why we\u2019re studying radon \u2013 not just for lung cancer,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd the fact that we have such massive exposure to it here in North Dakota means we have an opportunity to become an expert in something big. And it\u2019s a good thing to be an expert on the stuff in your own backyard, because no one else is going to do it for you.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n You\u2019re gonna hear me ROAR <\/strong><\/p>\n To that end, Schwartz helped establish the Radon Outreach and Research (ROAR)<\/a> project at UND. The goal of ROAR, he says, is to improve community health not only through directed radon research, but by informing the public of the risks of radon and, subsequently, providing access to radon detection and mitigation resources.<\/p>\n ROAR initiatives already underway include partnering with Grand Forks Public<\/a> \u2013 the city\u2019s public library \u2013 on free radon test kit lending; a project with chair of the SMHS Department of Family & Community Medicine, Dr. David Schmitz, wherein callers to the ND Quits Tobacco Quitline are offered free radon counseling and free radon test kits; and the development of an experimental radon test chamber, to be used in animal studies.<\/p>\n This last task has been embraced by newly-minted Ph.D. Mark Williamson, a research assistant professor in the Department of Population Health. Calling such test chambers rare in institutions of higher education, particularly in the Midwest, Williamson says that his association with the UND-based Dakota Community Collaborative on Translational Activity (DaCCoTA) provided him and Schwartz with an equipment grant to help purchase materials for a radon test chamber, soon to be housed at UND.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are a couple of these [chambers] worldwide, but there really isn\u2019t a lot of infrastructure for that type of research \u2013 at least at a reasonable price,\u201d Williamson explains. \u201cWe hope to build that infrastructure here to be able to have mechanistic radon-based studies.\u201d<\/p>\n By \u201cmechanistic,\u201d Williamson means research studies that go beyond mere observational studies of the most superficial effects of radon on animals to produce papers that focus on biological processes and the pathophysiology of a disease \u2013 research that\u2019s cell-based and data-driven.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a lot you could do with a chamber here,\u201d Williamson continues. \u201cWe\u2019ve purchased the parts and have most of the approvals. Now we\u2019re really just working hard to find a location that can be approved and renovated. That\u2019s a still ongoing process, but we\u2019re doing our best to make that a reality.\u201d<\/p>\n Williamson, who hopes to have the chamber up and running by the middle of 2024 at the latest, adds that the scholarship such a project could produce would both launch a variety of interdisciplinary radon studies in the region and serve to enhance UND\u2019s reputation nationally. Describing the type of animal studies his team could design, he says, tongue-in-cheek, that the sky\u2019s the limit with radon.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019ll actually be four different chambers. You could have a control group \u2013 who have no radon exposure \u2013 and increase the levels of radon in the other chambers and see if there\u2019s higher incidences of cancer, or if exposure makes existing conditions worse.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n A cancer test for your house <\/strong><\/p>\n And that\u2019s just the beginning. For his part, Schwartz, who specializes in cancers of unknown etiology, says that the local data implicating radon in a variety of conditions is already compelling \u2013 and that a public university-based test chamber could do a world of good in building on existing literature.<\/p>\n Pointing to North Dakota\u2019s statistically outsized incidence \u2013 first out of 50 American states \u2013 of chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), a cancer that occurs primarily among the elderly, the researcher says that it\u2019s quite possible that radon is involved.<\/p>\n \u201cAbout 70% of CLL is diagnosed accidentally, in the course of other medical care,\u201d says Schwartz. \u201cI saw these data and thought \u2018gosh, what\u2019s that about?\u2019 I didn\u2019t know. Nobody does \u2013 we don\u2019t know what causes chronic lymphocytic leukemia. But most leukemias are caused by exposure to radiation. So I asked myself, naively, \u2018do we have any radiation in North Dakota?\u2019 Well, it turns out that the most common source of ionizing radiation, the kind that causes cancer, is radon at home.\u201d<\/p>\n This is where the test chamber might help determine the cause and\/or contributing factors of something like CLL.<\/p>\n Even so, Schwartz understands the general lack of awareness about radon in the region: getting the public\u2019s attention about the dangers of a colorless, odorless gas that might produce a health problem years from now can be a hard sell. This is why good data and good communication are keys to helping change community behavior. And part of the way to do that, he says, is to adapt the literature on cancer screening and human behavior to radon testing.<\/p>\n To that end, Schwartz has been working with UND Department of Communication<\/a> chair and associate professor Soojung Kim on communicating the risks of radon. Kim met Schwartz when she was earning her Master of Public Health degree at the SMHS. The pair bonded over changing behavior through communication and recognized that getting people to test their homes for radon involved solving communication issues more than anything.<\/p>\n \u201cOur recent clinical trial data on the results of distributing short-term charcoal radon test kits show that despite the receipt of free radon test kits, they are rarely returned to the laboratory,\u201d Kim says, adding that simplifying the testing and remediation process \u2013 and communicating the ease of such home tests \u2013 has been enormously productive. \u201cThese findings strongly suggested that an alternate means to promote radon testing was needed.\u201d<\/p>\n Nodding at his colleague\u2019s comments, Schwartz says that he\u2019s happy to be at the forefront of both the on-the-ground research into radon and the campaign to communicate the results of that research.<\/p>\n \u201cThe beauty of free, electronic tests is that they remove that particular barrier. You don\u2019t have to put a test in an envelope or mail it. You don\u2019t have to do any of those things, because the answer is right there,\u201d Schwartz concludes of the Grand Forks Public\u2019s digital take-home radon tests. \u201cIt\u2019s much more like a COVID test that you can get for free. And those work because people take them and 10 minutes later you get a positive result or you don\u2019t. If you think about testing your house for radon, it\u2019s a cancer test for your house. And I think if you look at it with that much wider lens, you get a better sense of how to fix the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n By Brian James Schill<\/a> SMHS researchers partner with the UND Department of Communication and Grand Forks Public on radon testing Evangelist is too strong a word. Although activist doesn\u2019t quite capture it either. Whatever the designation, Dr. Gary Schwartz, chair of the Department of Population Health at the UND School of Medicine & Health Sciences, acknowledges the zeal with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":10524,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[294,2444,1107,2438,2441,2391,54,2443,2437,2436,2439,2442,2440],"class_list":["post-10522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-cancer","tag-cll","tag-communication","tag-grand-forks-public","tag-kim","tag-leukemia","tag-library","tag-population-health","tag-radon","tag-roar","tag-schwartz","tag-wendt","tag-williamson"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
\nPatrick Miller<\/a> contributed to this story<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"