[ RadSafe ] Abstract: Age-at-exposure effects on risk estimates fornon-cancer mortality in the Japanese atomic bomb survivors

[John Jacobus]

Jim,
Glad you appreciated seeing this paper, and thank you
for the comments.

I am not an epidemologist, and appreciate any comments
as that other-than-cancer risks have appeared and will
continue to appear in the literature.  I would
appreciate any comments on the validity of the results
for comparison.

--- "Dukelow, James S Jr" <jim.dukelow at pnl.gov> wrote:

>  
> I thank John Jacobus for providing a link to this
> interesting paper.
> 
> I have a few comments following a first pass through
> the Zhang et al.
> paper.
> 
> This appears to be an example of the old adage that
> if you torture a
> data set long enough it will tell you what you want
> to hear.  Perhaps
> national policy should be that we torture neither
> prisoners/detainees
> nor data sets.
> 
> Table 1 of the paper gives numbers of subjects and
> numbers of non-cancer
> death for various dose ranges.  I have added a
> calculation of the death
> rate per 1000 subjects for each dose range
> 
> <0.005 Sv   37458 subjects   12660 deaths   337.98
> deaths per 1000
> 0.005 to 0.1 Sv  31648 deaths   10650 deaths  
> 336.51 deaths per 1000
> 0.1 to 0.2 Sv   5732 subjects   1975 deaths   344.56
> deaths per 1000
> 0.2 to 0.5 Sv   6332 subjects   2226 deaths   351.55
> deaths per 1000
> 0.5 to 1 Sv    3983 subjects   1292 deaths    324.38
> deaths per 1000
> 1 to 2 Sv     927 subjects    274 deaths     295.58
> deaths per 1000
> 2 to 4 Sv      228 subjects    56 deaths     245.61
> deaths per 1000
> 
> Totals        86308 subjects    29133 deaths   
> 337.55 deaths per 1000
> 
> A Chi-square test (df = 6) of the hypothesis that
> excess relative risk
> per Sv (ERR) = 0 for the overall data set is
> rejected the two-tailed 2%
> level, but the reason for rejection is that ERR = 0
> over-predicts deaths
> in the 0.5 Sv to 4 Sv groups.  Chi-square tests of
> hypotheses with ERR >
> 0 would be rejected at even higher levels (that is
> smaller values of the
> tail probabilities alpha).  The hypothesis that ERR
> has a small negative
> value would be accepted, but I haven't had a chance
> yet to calculate the
> range of such ERR values.
> 
> Looking at the rest of the paper, most values of ERR
> calculated for the
> dozens (hundreds?) of confidence intervals reports
> have confidence
> intervals that include negative values of ERR.  A
> few of the calculated
> ERRs are positive with positive confidence
> intervals.  Several ERRs are
> negative, but all have confidence intervals
> including ERR = 0.
> 
> The authors appear to be using standard methods of
> epidemiology, which
> is another story.  No corrections appear to have
> been made for multiple
> tests of hypothesis.
> 
> The authors manage to extract a scary abstract from
> this trash.
> 
> Best regards.
> 
> Jim Dukelow
> Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
> Richland, WA
> jim.dukelow at pnl.gov
> 
> These comments are mine and have not been reviewed
> and/or approved by my
> management or by the U.S. Department of Energy.
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: radsafe-bounces at radlab.nl
> [mailto:radsafe-bounces at radlab.nl] On
> Behalf Of John Jacobus
> Sent: Friday, December 09, 2005 7:08 AM
> To: radsafe; know_nukes at yahoogroups.com
> Subject: [ RadSafe ] Abstract: Age-at-exposure
> effects on risk estimates
> fornon-cancer mortality in the Japanese atomic bomb
> survivors
> 
> Age-at-exposure effects on risk estimates for
> non-cancer mortality in
> the Japanese atomic bomb survivors
>     Wei Zhang, Colin R Muirhead and Nezahat Hunter
>     2005 J. Radiol. Prot. 25 393-404
> 
>     Abstract: 
>
http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/-alert=1221/0952-4746/25/4/003
> 
>     Full text PDF:
>
http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/-alert=1221/0952-4746/25/4/003/jrp5_4_003.
> pdf
> . . .

+++++++++++++++++++
"Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction."
"John F. Kennedy, U.S. President and former Naval Officer 

-- John
John Jacobus, MS
Certified Health Physicist
e-mail:  crispy_bird at yahoo.com

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