Story by DEB ERDLEY and MEGAN TOMASIC
Oct. 9, 2022
For Gail Orcutt, what began as a cough and a bit of wheezing ended with a baffling diagnosis of lung cancer one day short of her 57th birthday.
She never smoked, always watched her diet and never missed a chance to exercise.
While recovering from surgery to remove her left lung, she stumbled onto an article about the link between radon and lung cancer in nonsmokers.
It was the first time she had heard of radon.
A test of her Iowa home revealed high levels of the deadly, naturally occurring radioactive gas. She later learned of elevated levels in communities where she had spent tens of thousands of hours teaching special education students over 33 years before retiring two years earlier.
Those startling findings touched off a decade-long crusade to educate the public about radon and push lawmakers to protect the state’s more than 500,000 students and educational staff by requiring schools to test for radon and perform mitigation when high levels were found.
Two years after she died in May 2020 at age 67, Iowa’s governor signed a law that fulfilled her wish.
It didn’t come easily.
“(Gail) hit some roadblocks,” said Orcutt’s husband, Bill.
They were the same obstacles Pennsylvania lawmakers have encountered every legislative session for the past decade as they have attempted to pass laws requiring radon testing.
“They were afraid it was going to increase people’s taxes or the cost of homes and so on. … The school board association fussed about it,” Bill Orcutt said. “The administrators fussed about it. They thought it was going to cost more money and there wasn’t that much money for schools to begin with. Well, she told them, ‘You’re going to use that money if someone breaks a window, but you’re not going to use it to fix something that could kill people?’
“She didn’t just curl up in a ball and wait to die. She built a community through social media. She traveled to Des Moines and knocked on the door of every lawmaker in Iowa’s General Assembly and spoke with various groups across the state.”
Gail Orcutt continued on, even as her cancer went into remission and then came back twice, requiring chemotherapy and radiation. She even needed a hip replacement when the cancer spread to her bones.
“I use the term velvet hammer to describe her,” Bill Orcutt said.
Nearly 700 miles away in Granville, Ohio, Annie Cacciato thought the bumps and bruises on her body were just the price she paid for her active lifestyle.
A trip to her doctor in 2013 told a different story: stage 4 lung cancer.
A nonsmoker, the mother of three daughters suspected radon exposure was to blame.
Later, she learned that her high school and a building where she worked tested far beyond the levels at which federal officials say action should be taken. So began her campaign to raise awareness about radon.
She took a certification course to perform radon testing and began advocating for testing in schools, said her husband, Matt.
She took her case to the Ohio legislature.
“I had been breathing in a major carcinogen for years, completely unaware of its presence or the damage it was inflicting on my body. It was like a dirty bomb that had no taste, no color or smell — a silent killer with me daily. No one needs to be in my situation,” she said in her testimony.
She wanted everyone everywhere to know about the dangers of radon, her husband said.
Five months before she died in November 2021 at age 58, she watched Gov. Mike DeWine sign legislation raising awareness and designating January as Radon Awareness Month in Ohio.
“She was a great advocate,” said state Rep. Jon Cross. “We wanted to pass the bill to get people to pay attention because schools have it, businesses have it, homeowners have it, and you can mitigate it and feel relieved to know you don’t have that worry.”
Seventeen states have various types of radon-related policies, according to the American Association of Radon Scientists and Technologists.
Of those, 10 states require testing schools for radon and four require remediation if radon levels are higher than 4.0 picocuries per liter, the level where exposure poses a serious risk, according to federal standards.
Despite being cited as having the third-highest level of radon in the nation, Pennsylvania has no laws requiring testing in any public or private buildings or homes, although some mortgage lenders require testing before approving loans.
Some supporters find this ironic because it was in Pennsylvania where environmentalists first became aware of the danger of radon in homes and other structures. In 1984, a construction engineer named Stanley Watras walked into the Limerick Power Plant in Pottstown, setting off alarms used to ensure workers were not exposed to radiation.
Because the plant was under construction, there was no nuclear fuel at the site, so it was impossible that Watras had been exposed to radiation there. When investigators went to his home, they found radon levels 700 times the levels considered acceptable for human exposure.
As a result, federal officials urged all homeowners to begin testing for radon and perform mitigation if levels were high.
Deb Erdley and Megan Tomasic are Tribune-Review staff writers. Deb can be reached at derdley@triblive.com, and Megan can be reached at mtomasic@triblive.com.