Sumpin' else to worry about..........

[Dave Taylor]

"Granite Counter tops......... dangerous to your health, film at 11:00".

So says a news item on the 11:00pm TV news here in the DC area last evening.

News flash goes on to say that "some esoteric granites" from Brazil have been registering dangerous levels of cancer causing "Radon" emissions.

Never thought much about it but..... I spose' one would not want granite mined from a big hole somewhere around Bikini atoll :think:

[Sponsored Links]

[cx]

Yep, yep, gettin' tougher and tougher alla time to wring dinero outa the homeowner for savin' her from asbestos in her floor tiles, lead in the paint on the walls, arsenic in the treated wood in her swing set, mold on nearly every surface, etc. Need a new boogy-man she can pay to be rid of and Radon seems a perfect fit, no? :)

My opinion; worth price charged.


They got granite mines on Bikini atol, Dave? :scratch:

[jjwq8]

If the report is true then there must be dozens of dead men walking at the quarry.
I aint fraid of no radon, so i volunteer to go to Brazil to investigate. Good excuse to stay off the radar for another 6 months

[jvcstone]

An old and frequently debunked tale brought to you by the solid surface (read plastic) industry. Not true, but fits right in with our current fear mongering ways. I'll see if I can't find a good link to what the MIA is up to in regards to this.

JVC

[flatfloor]

Put your hard hat on another chunk of sky is falling. :uhh:

[GraniteGirl]

If the report is true then there must be dozens of dead men walking at the quarry.
I aint fraid of no radon, so i volunteer to go to Brazil to investigate. Good excuse to stay off the radar for another 6 month

And if you believe them, you'll be glowing in the dark when you come back :idea:

What an awful waste of time and resources on some very half @ssed reporting.

[tileguytodd]

This'l get ya, and if that dont, THIS will.........You'd think that if they figured out every possible danger to the human body we'll somehow all live forever...
NEWS FLASH...Aint none of us getting out of here Alive!!!

Quit worrying and start laughing at the monkeys in the lab coats......( cant believe they actually get paid to figure stuff like this out)...........I also cant believe the people who write this crap have been left alone to Breed!!!

Long haired California/Martians ( they like the climate)Invent & Import new Martian Green Drink.......The govt agency USDMI&E ( US dept of Martian Imports & Exports) says new drink is BAD for your Gallstones. Martians vow to stop manufacturing if Government agrees to give them Supplemental Social Security, Medicare & all the free Taco Bell they can eat............News at 11..........;)

[HotinOKC]

Normally, I do not ever read the NYTimes, but:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/24/garden/24granite.html?_r=1&ref=garden&oref=slogin

[Davestone]

I HAVE been feelin a little queasy lately, and my hair seems to be thinning.

[Foochacho]

http://www.thefloorpro.com/community/ceramic-and-stone-q-and-a/3076-radon-gas-and-granite-countertops-3.html

[mdanforth]

Damn, and I just ordered granite for our new house :cry:

oh well maybe some gin and tonic will wash away the radon :neesie:

[Shaughnn]

I was just talking about this very ting with a client this morning. Bill Vincent referred this client to me last year, from the work that Bill does over at GardenWeb.Com. According to my client, Bill has a "very good friend" over at GardenWeb named Al who just loves to tell people about the dangers of radon in their granite. Seems that Al sells solid-surface products. :yeah:
Hey Bill! You out there???
Shaughnn

[GraniteGirl]

Shaughnn - don't even MENTION that creep. He is like a fungus and needs but a mere spore to start spreading. Count your lucky stars he has not infiltrated this forum yet. The only things he brings with him are discord and unhappiness.

:sick:

[FrankFLA]

I have seen and hear this too. Starting to get legs this time. I just saw a show on the history channel the other night on port security after 9/11. Nothing to do about counters. They were talking about how they scan containers coming in for radation. One went off while they were filming. It was granite from china. They said this is common for granite shipments.
Now is it dangerous or not, who knows.

[gueuzeman]

Food for thought, probably all the really cool stuff is the "hottest".

Like most things, a bit of thought gets by the fearmongering.

Good comments by Bill Vincent.

Me/ I can't afford them anyway, I'm pouring concrete.

gueuze

[LadyGodiva]

I didn't choose granite but not because of this report :yipee:

[kate42]

to wring dinero outa the homeowner for savin' her from asbestos in her floor tiles, lead in the paint on the walls, arsenic in the treated wood in her swing set, mold on nearly every surface, etc. Need a new boogy-man she can pay to be rid of and Radon seems a perfect fit, no?

Why is it HER? How about HIM?

[sandbagger]

dang! and to think - to get glow-in-the-dark Spectralock you gotta pay extra! :D

[Foochacho]

Shaughnn Bill is probally sick of talking about this that is why I posted the link to thefloorpro in my last post. You can see Bill's disgust for Al in that post.

[jvcstone]

A MIA link:

http://www.stoneadvice.com/filesharing/MIA_truthaboutgraniteradonradiation.pdf

JVC

[gueuzeman]

Lots of great links here, the above "don't worry" MIA link is of course as suspect as the alarmist ones from competing material manufacturers. The truth is most likely somewhere in between. The one thing the MIA document does is imply that ALL granites are equally not toxic, unlike the NY times article that stated that different stones can have all different knids of radon/radiation levels.

It's a risk, and the owner should be able to base their decision on the amount of risk they choose to assume, like the level of an insurance deductable.

And the other thread about nutritional values in restaurant menus. Informed consumers make our lives better, IMHO. Are there health risks from epoxy resin in quartz tops or the plastic in corian? Probably. What about the high VOC gule used in formica and the stuff they stick the particle board together with.

In the immortal words of Warren Zevon (RIP ) "Life'll kill ya."

gueuze

[Crestone Tile]

People really worry about the wrong things.

[cx]

Yep, a lot like driving a car to the airport and worrying that the airplane might crash. :rolleyes:

[T_Hulse]

The NYTimes article is a real hatchet piece; extremely poorly written. They have used innuendo and unrelated facts next to each other to twist the truth away from reality.
Just a couple of many:
- The first (anecdotal) example was a nice chunk of the fear mongering in that article, yet the real problem is in the way the radon or radiation is measured. Too often they're taking encapsulated micro air samples from right off the granite or plain radiation samples directly from the granite itself, as in this quote: emitting ..., depending on where along the stone the measurement was taken. That could exponentially skew the results if compared to the EPA standard which is supposed to be a free-air sample in the whole house. In fact Dr. Sugarman’s final conclusion was: “The health risk to me and my family was probably small,”

- The example of Ms. Zick doesn't quote any real numbers, and doesn't even say what the radiation levels of the stone are being compared to, so they could certainly still be safe, even if it's on the high end compared to other granites. Be wary of journalism that reports we know nothing as though it were an important fact: “I don’t really know what the numbers are telling me about my risk,” Ms. Zick said. “I don’t want to tear it out, but I don’t want cancer either.” Pure innuendo & fear mongering. :shake:
For instance everything has a radiation level, they might as well have reported: 'This bread has the very, very, highest radiation level of all 5 samples we tested; throw out your bread!'. It's still a true fact, but vastly irrelevant if all 5 are safe.

- It's similar for the tests cited being done at Rice University. Even if one of the stones was found at 100x background levels, that is a whole different way of measuring than the EPA's free-air measurement of the average house air. The article seems to imply, without really saying so, that this puts you way over safe breathing levels; but that is absolutely not true. Those two different kind of tests could give results that are, again, exponentially off; on another planet really.

This whole issue is being driven mainly by a fake non-profit shill company for major solid surface companies, BuildClean (http://www.buildclean.org/?id=1) (granite's competitors), pretending to be an unbiased consumer education non-profit.

Here is what the EPA really says about radon & granite countertops:
EPA Confirms That Granite Countertops Pose No Significant Health Risk (http://nsraweb.com/index.php/Latest/EPA_Confirms_That_Granite_Countertops_Pose_No_Significant_Health_Risk.html)

[gueuzeman]

Isn't solid surface made of plastic, that is, oil? What's so clean about that?

Then there's Enviroglas (http://www.enviroglasproducts.com/) , post consumer product, but how "green" is the resin manufacturing industry?

Might as well give it all up and go live in a cave......ummm, that's made of radioactive granite. :cry:

Just can't win- gueuze

[dgunnels]

"Everything Gives You Cancer Everything." Joe Jackson

Granite gives you cancer huh? What about marble? Is it only finished stones? We live in a world surounded by the natural materials. I think the only thing dangerous around here is people who make up alarmist material with limp lame 'facts.' They need to get real jobs and positively contribute to their fellow man.

[gueuzeman]

Just checked the buildclean site, lol. Forum has 3 topics with a total of 14 replies. :lol1:

Very carefully worded replies from Sarah Speer, walking the tightrope of truth.

Good responses questioning the voc's in resins and othe toxic building materials far more prevalent in building materials than stone and what happens in a fire, yummy smell. Recent story of Katrina trailers full of formaldyhyde a much more real concern.

I'm looking aroun my living room and thinking what everything woould burn like.

Stone? A pizza oven? Pizza gives you cancer!!! (Sponsored by the corn tortilla manufacturers association). Our ovens are adobe, but the mud is made of sand, and the sand is made from rocks, and...........

Here comes the tweedle beetle battles :rolleyes:

gueuze