Would a super agency have responded to the long term heath impacts of radon as KFL&A Public Health has done?

Jeff Green | Aug 30, 2019

Late last fall, Kingston Frontenac Lennox and Addington Public Health (KFL&A PH) decided to expend some resources on developing a radon mitigation strategy for all of the residents of its catchment area.

This initiative was spearheaded by Dr. Kieran Moore, the Medical Officer of Health/CEO of KFL&A Public Health. It was done in response to information that indicated that the incidenc of high radon levels in houses within KFL&A were well above the provincial average.

Radon is not that well understood by the public at large, partly because it is only exposure to radon over many years that has been shown the be a leading cause of lung cancer.

 As well, while it is not that complicated, testing for radon is not as easy as testing for carbon monoxide for example. It is not just a matter of plugging in a device and waiting for it to beep. The testing device needs to be left in place at the lowest elevation in a home where people regularly spend 4 hours or more per day for 3 months during the heating season.

The campaign that KFL&A Public Health executed last winter began with a public information component about the nature of the long-term public health risk that is posed by radon. The information campaign was necessary in order to be able to complete the survey that was the basis for the report that Public Health released in July.

And, as we have seen in the survey results, high levels of radon gas in the living areas of homes in the City of Kingston and the Counties of Frontenac and Lennox and Addington are much more common that limited surveys that were done in the past had indicated. Building departments are responding in short order to this new information to provide a fix for newly built homes.

While changes in the application of the building code will not benefit the health outcomes of the 200,000 people in this region who are living in existing dwellings, it will have an effect over time.

The next phase of this effort by Public Health is to help those 200,000 people. This includes trying to get as many homeowners in the region as possible to test of radon, an effort that is already underway. Test kits will be available at all Public Health offices in KFL&A in November, and they can be returned to those offices for analysis. Once the results, an effort to help those residents whose homes need to be remediated but don’t have $3,000 available to pay for it, may also be necessary.

The entire radon program demonstrates that the current operation of KFL&A Public Health is doing what it is intended to do, create better outcomes for the public using public funds, both provincial and municipal dollars. The pay off over time will be a decrease in the incidents of lung cancer in KFL&A. This is good for all of us, of course, and will also result in a decrease in the pressure on our healthcare system, and potential cost savings over time.

Most readers will know where this editorial is going by now. The Ontario government is doing two things with Public Health right now. They are cutting funding, as of January 1st, which will result in increases in municipal taxation and/or cuts in the levels of service.

Local initiatives such as the response to radon in KFL&A, are the kinds of initiatives that do not see the light of day in a funding cut scenario. When money is tight, organisations need to focus on their “core” mandate instead of new initiatives.

The second part of the Ontario plan for Public Health is to amalgamate smaller public health organisations into larger entities.

It is less likely that radon would have been identified as a distinct problem for a smaller region within a large geographical area such as Eastern Ontario. And even if it had been, the ability to implement a robust survey and a mitigation strategy in one year would be some trick to pull off for an entity such as Eastern Ontario Public Health, which is looking like the best-case scenario from the restructuring exercise that is underway.

This will be one of the tests of any new system that is created to replace the current public health organisations in Ontario.

Will the new system, even if it is cheaper to operate, which is not a given, be able to respond to province-wide public health concerns as well as localised public health concerns, in a timely fashion?

Or will we end up looking back at the ‘good old days’ when Public Health in Ontario was a nimble and responsive public service?