A new report written by Exponent and commissioned by NMHC and the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) critically reviews the study, “Evaluating and Assessing Radon Testing in Housing with multifamily federal financing (the EARTH Study),” by Kitto et al. (2021), as well as a predecessor article, “Evaluation of percentage-based radon testing requirements for federally funded multi-family housing projects,” by Neri (2019).
The Exponent review finds that the EARTH Study fails to provide much of the clarification called for in the Neri article and highlights methodological issues that “substantially constrain the reliability of the EARTH Study recommendation.”
Specifically, the review identifies the following methodological issues:
- The radon data analyzed by the EARTH Study are not representative of nationwide multifamily housing units.
- The EARTH Study and Neri analyses fail to consider and properly account for measurement error inherent to radon testing methods.
- Health cost and risk assumptions are overly simplified, inadequately supported, and not demonstrably applicable to the national population of multifamily housing occupants.
Full Document
Download | Review of Kitto EARTH Radon StudyStaff Resource
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