AW: [ RadSafe ] Re: Shipyard worker study - NO Unhealthy Controls!

Sat Feb 10 06:27:34 CST 2007

Howard, (Keith),

The SMRs reported in Matanoski's work were determined by comparison with the white-male general population!

<quote>The risk of death during follow-up was compared to 1970 U.S. white male lifetable probabilities.<endquote> (p. 7 in 1.1 Introduction/Overview of: Matanoski Genevieve M, Health Effects of Low-Level Radiation in Shipyard Workers. DOE Contract Number: DE-AC02-79EV10095, Final Report DOE/EV/10095--T2, The Johns Hopkins University, Department of Epidemiology, School of Hygiene and Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland, June 1991)

The attached (PDF-file) table is an excerpt from Matanoski's report and supports to some extent the claim that the Non-Nuclear-Workers (NNW) were - with respect to selected(!) diseases - less healthy than U.S. white-male (USWM), in particular with respect to "all malignancies" and within this class with respect to "non-respiratory malignancies". With respect to "circulatory" diseases (where predominantly one would expect to see a healthy worker effect), the NNW (and the nuclear workers even more so) did indeed display a marked healthy worker effect in dying significantly less frequent than USWM. The overall mortality of NNW from all causes was indistinguishable from USWM. With respect to "respiratory malignancies", all(!) worker groups showed an increased mortality with respect to USWM which was statistically significant for all workers pooled together and nearly so for NNW. Regarding the nuclear workers, this is in contrast to the several chronic radiation exposure epidemiological studies where reduced mortality is observed most frequently for lung cancer!

In this regard, both your and even more so John Jacobus' rendering of Matanoski's data appear too simplistic. 

Sometime ago I distributed a graph in a PDF-file displaying the Matanoski data for these mayor findings. If someone likes to see it he may send me his request.

Best regards, Rainer

________________________________

Von: radsafe-bounces at radlab.nl im Auftrag von howard long
Gesendet: Fr 09.02.2007 18:32
An: welch at jlab.org
Cc: Keith Welch; radsafe at radlab.nl
Betreff: [ RadSafe ] Re: Shipyard worker study - NO Unhealthy Controls!

No, Keith, you assume incorrectly. SMR 1.00 means what Hiserodt wrote, below:
  The OBSERVED death rate in the control [No rad.] group of workers happened to be identical to the B Vital statistics for the general population. It was NOT simply taken as a convenient (but not identical) control!

  This also confirms that there was NOT an "unhealthy control group", another distraction that JJ attempted, despite exposure to asbestos and slightly increased deathrate from (rare) mesothelioma for all of the shipyard workers.

  Read the original data, conveniently organized in "Underexposed - "!
  Promote hormesis to liberate nuclear power!

  Howard Long

welch at jlab.org wrote:
  I assumed that the SMR being equal to 1.00 was because it was simply
"defined" as the baseline. In other words the non-exposed workers were
being defined as the "general population" to which the nukes were
compared. That sounds consistent with what Ruth Sponsler said.

Keith Welch

> "-it is seen that the Nones group has a SMR of 1.00. This means it exactly
> corresponds with the general population data - US B Vital Statistics"
> Hiserodt
>
> The controls of the NSWS were like the exposed and the general
> population.
> However, the rare mesthelioma deaths were 3-5 x for all, perhaps from
> asbestos exposure. They are so few (18, 8, 10 in >.5, <.5, No extra rem)
> that it does not affect this vast study with 2,797, 1,168 and 4,453
> deaths, respectively.
>
> Howard Long
>

_______________________________________________
You are currently subscribed to the RadSafe mailing list

Before posting a message to RadSafe be sure to have read and understood the RadSafe rules. These can be found at: http://radlab.nl/radsafe/radsaferules.html

For information on how to subscribe or unsubscribe and other settings visit: http://radlab.nl/radsafe/

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: MatanoskiTable3_6excerptsTable.pdf
Type: application/pdf
Size: 21733 bytes
Desc: MatanoskiTable3_6excerptsTable.pdf
URL: <http://health.phys.iit.edu/pipermail/radsafe/attachments/20070210/beb16b72/attachment-0001.pdf>