[ RadSafe ] Radon: POWERFULLY associated with LESS lung cancer byB.Cohen

[Chris Steinmann]

Franz,

Seriously dude, your comments are not advancing positive effects of
this mailing list.

If you tone it down a notch I will come to Vienna and we will drink a
lot of the monk's brew.  And I will listen to all of your complaints
about RADSAFE for about 10 minutes, the time it takes for me to drink
a liter of the Augustiner's finest.

Best Regards,
Chris

On Thu, Jun 16, 2011 at 6:56 PM,  <franz.schoenhofer at chello.at> wrote:
> Howard,
>
> i address your mailing address to reach the so-called "International Radiation Protection Mailing List"., but of course it involves your message to a minor ext3ent.
>
> What is most impressive is you comment that politics should follow science. Comparing to reality I think you are dreaming a nice dream. .
>
> RADSAFERS, I am really tired of following all your sophisticated calculations of tenths of hundreths of percents of whaterver Sieverts. Compüare it to the actual radiation doses in your country, .
>
> Best regards.
>
> Franz
>
>
> ---- Howard <howard.long at comcast.net> schrieb:
>> Chris, your "APPARENT inverse relationship between lung cancer mortality and average radon concentrations" (emphasis added), disqualifies you as a serious critic of this most powerful epidemiologic study.
>>
>> I and many others have tried to torture out of Prof. Cohen (at meetings of Doctors for Disaster Preparedness and here, on line) a spurious "garbage in" explanation. Analyses assuming a hundred potential social skews results in the same: POWERFUL association in all stable USA
>> county populations, with and without smoking and 100 other potential skewers.
>>
>> I just took out of my wallet a cc of Cohen's graphs with bars of 95% significance used as points!
>> The "corrected for smoking" graph seems identical to the total graph, bpth showing
>> mortality just 2/3 at the 4 Bq/meter-cubed level touted as dangerous, as at 1/4 that exposure.
>> This is evidence for hormesis, not "apparent", but as definite as epidemiology can give.
>> LNT seems disproven by this (all Cohen will claim).
>>
>> Politics should follow science, not vice versa (I like this use of the word "vice").
>>
>> Howard Long MD MPH Family Doctor and Epidemiologist
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Jun 16, 2011, at 6:22 AM, "Chris Hofmeyr" <chris.hofmeyr at webmail.co.za> wrote:
>>
>> > Dear Proff Raabe and Cohen, Radsafers,
>> >
>> > Prof Cohen's US-wide county-based radon studies caused quite a stir since 1995,
>> > mainly because of the apparent inverse relationship between lung cancer
>> > mortality and average radon concentrations. However, Cohen's main conclusion
>> > was that the result was at variance with the linear-no threshold (LNT) model.
>> > My own analysis of the data sets for two periods kindly provided by Prof Cohen
>> > showed adamantly that there was in fact NO indication of a dependence on
>> > average radon concentration up to the maximum recorded. Such a finding would
>> > concur with Raabe's model of protracted low-intensity exposure (HPJ, July
>> > 2011).  Human lifespan is too short to show discernible lung cancer induction
>> > from domestic radon concentrations in the USA.
>> >
>> > However, uncertainty remains with respect to the question of the apparent
>> > inverse relationship in Cohen's data between lung cancer mortality rates and
>> > average county radon concentration, which some people wanted to interpret as
>> > proof of hormesis. Significantly, in a 2006 paper on cancer risk from low level
>> > radiation, Cohen did not cite his own radon data in support of hormesis or even
>> > rejection of LNT.  In Cohen's data average county radon concentration was to
>> > some degree anti-correlated with smoking prevalence, thus explaining the
>> > inverse relationship in the uncorrected (for smoking) data. The smoking
>> > correction to the data was consequently important for the 'real' dependence
>> > curve. Unfortunately it was not possible to analyse the correctness of the
>> > smoking correction, nor associated uncertainties, but I became convinced that
>> > Cohen was not able to correct the data adequately for smoking, possibly
>> > resulting in the persistent apparent inverse dependence of the 'corrected'
>> > data.
>> >
>> > A stark illustration of the overwhelming importance of extraneous factors -
>> > most probably smoking - is to compare the female lung cancer data sets 1970-79
>> > with 1979-94. There was a mortality increase of almost a factor of 2, whereas
>> > male lung cancer declined very slightly between the two data sets (during
>> > 1970-79 it was about a factor of 5 higher than the female figure).
>> > Regards.
>> > Chris Hofmeyr
>> > chris.hofmeyr at webmail.co.za
>> >
>> > ____________________________________________________________
>> > South Africas premier free email service - www.webmail.co.za
>> >
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>> >
>> >
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> --
> Franz Schoenhofer, PhD, MinRat
> Habicherg. 31/7
> A-1160 Vienna
> Austria
> mobile: ++43 699 1706 1227
>
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