Come January, two things are reliable in Boulder and Basin: cows approaching calving, and local radon health mines making national headlines during National Radon Action Month, a program of the Environmental Protection Agency.
This Jan. 17, one such headline — “Radon Causes Cancer. These Tourists Drink it Up.” — was published in the New York Times atop a column by graphic journalist Wendy MacNaughton. In words and drawings, she described her visit to Basin’s Merry Widow Health Mine — she doesn’t indicate when — and juxtaposes people’s claims of radon’s health benefits with the EPA’s warning that exposure to the element is a health risk.
Merry Widow’s co-owner, Chung Kim, whom MacNaughton depicted in her column, didn’t respond to an email requesting his take on it.
Patricia Lewis, whose family has owned and operated Boulder’s Free Enterprise Radon Health Mine for four generations, took the attention in stride.
“You’ll see more of it,” she said. “It’s been going on since we opened the doors.”
On the one hand is the EPA, whose website states “radon is the leading cause of lung cancer deaths among nonsmokers in America and claims the lives of about 21,000 Americans each year.”
On the other hand are the people who claim to have been healed by sitting in the presence of the gas or drinking water infused with it.
Lewis said the science of radon is political, noting that despite the EPA warning the State of Montana doesn’t regulate the radon health mines. She also noted how visitors to the Boulder and Basin health mines have been an important industry to both communities for years.
Neither the EPA or Montana Department of Public Health and Human services responded to requests for comment.
For her part, Lewis doesn’t claim radon is a cure-all and said it doesn’t work for everyone. But she noted that she has seen radon treatment work “for those people for whom nothing else works,” and that its positive impacts “can’t be minimized.”
Melanie Sako said by email that the Merry Widow “is specifically why we decided to buy a house here in Basin,” and noted that doctors in Europe routinely prescribe mine visits “as a matter of accepted healing.”
“In my opinion, [the owners of the Merry Widow] are special people wanting to offer the gift of healing affordably to folks,” she wrote.
