[ RadSafe ] risk from being overweight

[Bernard L. Cohen]

The info from the Life Insurance industry is given in my paper

C    Catalog of Risks Extended and Updated, Health Phys. 61, 317- 
335;1991       

      (posted unabridged as item #4 on my web site www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc)
    It gives the loss of life expectancy for people more than 15% 
overweight as about
    30 days for each pound overweight      



Kai Kaletsch wrote:
> Friends,
>
> In the olden days, we used to compare the risk from 1 mSv to the 
> hypothetical risk of some other activity, like drinking a glass of 
> wine. Since then, the HPS has (rightly) discouraged the practice of 
> calculating risks from trivially small exposures. Now, I use a slide 
> comparing the life expectancy reduction of different (real) risk 
> factors and calculate the amount of radiation exposure one would need 
> to get the same reduction in life expectancy. The results are, of 
> course, non-trivial exposures and I am not violating the HPS position 
> statement.
>
> One line of the slide states that being 15% overweight will reduce 
> your life expectancy by about 2 years (can't remember off-hand where I 
> got this value) and that you would need to get 150 mSv/year every year 
> to get the same reduction.
>
> I would appreciate if someone could comment on the loss of life 
> expectancy from being overweight. Specifically with regard to this 
> article: 
> http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUSTRE55N0C720090624 . 
> It claims that overweight people live the longest. Obese and normal 
> weight people come in second, extremely obese people came in third, 
> while underweight people died youngest. To me, this was somewhat 
> surprising.
>
> Thanks,
> Kai
>
> Kai Kaletsch
> Environmental Instruments Canada Inc.
> #202 135 Robin Cr.
> Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
> Canada S7L 6M3
> Tel: 406 686 0081
> Home: 306 477 0623
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-- 
Bernard L. Cohen
Physics Dept., University of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, PA 15260
Tel: (412)624-9245  Fax: (412)624-9163
e-mail: blc at pitt.edu  web site: http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc