Date Published: 05/23/2001 [Source]
There's a killer on the loose inside Whitaker Middle School. According to inspection reports and other documents obtained by WW through a public records request, the Northeast Portland school contains levels of radon, a colorless, odorless radioactive gas, that are two to three times the federal Environmental Protection Agency's "action level."
Radon, according to the EPA, is the country's second leading cause of lung cancer deaths.
"There's a definite health hazard there," says Scott Burns, a geology professor at Portland State University and the state's foremost authority on radon, when shown a copy of the Whitaker documents. "A definite health hazard."