People Paying GOOD MONEY To Inhale Radon Gas (For Their Health)

[matcom]

<snip>

BASIN - Is health, like beauty, in the eye of the beholder?

If that's the case, thousands of people every year, from all over the world, find healing relief from a variety of ailments - from cataracts and emphysema to arthritis and migraine headaches - at Montana's most unusual health facilities, the radon health mines of Boulder and Basin.

Those two small towns, located a few miles apart between Butte and Helena on Interstate 15, are the only places in North America where people come and pay to breathe the radioactive radon gas that occurs naturally in the mines for their health.

The concept, even the name - "radon health mines," seems contradictory.

Radon is a gaseous radioactive element that is derived from the radioactive decay of uranium, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The Montana public health agency "doesn't encourage (the mines') use," said Dr. Todd Damrow of the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Service. "But people are free to use them."

http://www.missoulian.com/articles/2004/07/05/territory/territory01.txt

[Astarho]

1. A hundred years ago

people took radium pills for "curative powers" and "health reasons".

[NorthernSpy]

2. they were ignorant, but it wasn't their fault

Yes -- radium pills, radium laced water, little sachets of radium salts... They gave people bone cancer. Radium tends to accumulate in bones.

It's terrible to think of people swallowing all those becquerels of radiological poison. They were very trusting, because they didn't know any better.

These modern habitues of radon caves should know to stay away from such things, but they've let their notions get the better of them. Pseudoscience has many victims.


Mary

[AlecBGreen]

3. I cant remember who said it

but they (an ancient greek I think) said "Everything is curative, and everything is poisonous. It only depends on the dose."

Cant argue with that. Just look at how how vaccines and anti-venoms work.