Letter to the Editor
Northville High School Students Caution About Dangers of Radon
The students are promoting awareness of the dangers of radon, which can cause cancer.
This Letter to the Editor is from Northville High School students Jimmy Tian, Edward Clifton, Allison Montambeau and Jessica Tyer. It stems from their research for their AP Environmental Science class. On January 22, 2012, the famous football coach of the Penn State University Nittany Lions Joe Paterno died of complications from lung cancer. Most people think that lung cancer is simply a disease that smokers get. That is simply not true. Joe Paterno was not a smoker, but he lived in a very high radon risk area, the Pennsylvania Appalachians, leading to much speculation that Joe Paterno died as a result of radon induced lung cancer. The Environmental Protection Agency states that, each year, 21,000 non-smokers die of lung cancer from the …
In this Article:
Sarah McIntyre
2:15 pm on Monday, February 13, 2012
This was a great piece and I am glad to see high school students getting involved. I work for the Pennsylvania Lung Cancer Partnership and we are always trying to disspell the myth that only smokers can get lung cancer, when in fact at the point of diagnosis 65% of lung cancer patients are non-smokers; never smokers account for about 15%, while the rest may have quit years ago. This is truly a … more ›