Radon poisoning makes you live longer?

on Saturday, March 19, 2011

Check out these graphs for radon concentrations in the United States. Radon is a radioactive gas that seeps out of the ground and causes about 15,000 lung cancer deaths each year, according to the EPA:



Now compare them to these graphs for life expectancy in the USA:



And here are lung cancer deaths:



And here is a graph showing poor areas of the USA that live longer (blue) or shorter (red) than average:
http://medicine.plosjournals.org/archive/1549-1676/3/9/supinfo/10.1371_journal.pmed.0030260.sg001.pdf

The areas all match up pretty roughly. Here are some more radon estimate graphs: