Residents' perception and worldview about radon control policy in Canada: A pro-equity social justice lens

Abstract

Radon is a potent indoor air pollutant, especially in radon prone areas and in countries with long winters. As the second top lung carcinogen, radon is disproportionately affecting certain population subgroups. While many provinces have taken sporadic actions, the equity issue has remained unaddressed across all policy measures. Attempts to enforce radon guidelines and enact building regulations without considering residents' views have proved ineffective. Research linking residents' radon risk perception and worldviews regarding radon control policy is lacking in Canada. We applied mixed (quantitative and qualitative) methods in a pro-equity social justice lens to examine the variations in residents' risk perception, access to risk communication messages, and worldviews about risk management across the sociodemographic strata. Triangulation of the quantitative and qualitative findings strengthened the evidence base to identify challenges and potential solutions in addressing the health risk through upstream policy actions. Enacting radon control policy requires actions from all levels of governments and relevant stakeholders to ensure equal opportunities for all residents to take the preventive and adaptive measures. Small sample size limited the scope of findings for generalization. Future studies can examine the differential impacts of radon health risk as are determined by various sociodemographic variables in a representative national cohort.

Keywords: equity; indoor air quality; lung cancer; mixed methods; public health policy; radon; social justice; worldviews.