Nearly half of the schools tested for radon in Colorado have levels that exceed the federal “action level” of 4 picocuries per liter of air, according to a state report.
Under a state regulation that went into effect last year, schools were required to test for the potentially health-threatening odorless, colorless gas and submit results to the state health department by March 1 of this year. Nearly 80 percent of the state’s schools, or 1,162 schools, complied. Of the buildings tested, 45 percent recorded radon levels above 4 picocuries. Two percent of the schools, the health department report released last month said, had levels that exceeded 20 picocuries.
Roger Holbrook, the supervisor of the environmental-health program in the health department, said that although the regulation did not require schools to take follow-up measures, about one-fifth of the schools with high readings have completed or are planning to carry out remediation activities to lower their radon levels.
The former president of the Ohio state school board was never eligible to serve on the state board and therefore is not owed due process in being removed from it, a federal judge has ruled.
Paul Brickner was removed from the board and replaced with a gubernatorial appointee last summer after serving on the state panel for nine years.
State Attorney General Lee Fisher had charged that Mr. Brickner’s other position, as an administrative- law judge for the federal Social Security Administration, put him in conflict with a state law that prevents board members from holding “any other position of public trust or profit.”
Mr. Brickner sued, arguing that he had been dismissed from the board for political reasons and was being denied due process.
U.S. District Judge Alvin Krenzler last month ruled that Mr. Brickner could not have been denied due process since he was’ never eligible to serve in the first place. .
