People may win radon battle over city politics

Printed: August 28, 2002; The Decatur Daily News, online edition

THE DECATUR DAILY:

Putting a human face on an issue usually sways more opinions than statistics, even if the numbers tell a grim story.

That's apparently what is happening in Decatur as City Council members appear ready to vote for mandatory radon reduction devices in new homes next month.

Two months ago, the provision had little chance of making it into the city's new building code. Council President Pat Woller, who controls the agenda, kept tabling the issue to prevent it from coming before the entire council. Citing too much government regulation, she said the radon issue should not be part of the city code.

The radon issue had a sniff of politics because no one would admit taking it off the council agenda when the city code updates first surfaced for approval.

President Woller said there was no public clamor to have the provision adopted, even though Julie Dutton of the Morgan County Extension Service presented results from home testing that showed the deadly gas is present at unacceptable levels in many homes.

Ms. Dutton met with classic stonewalling as City Hall rejected her findings and decided to require more test results than she produced. But when Dr. Lane Price, a local oncologist, showed up at a meeting earlier this month and told of having, that day, signed four death certificates of people who died of lung cancer, politics began to take a back seat.

Radon can cause lung cancer.