[ RadSafe ] Cohen's radon results differently

[Chris Hofmeyr]

Mike Brennan, prof Cohen,

The thought has crossed my mind whether specifically some lung cancer sufferers
in small population counties might migrate to larger centres for treatment and
care prior to their death being recorded there. On the other hand, lung cancer
(LC) mortality against the county rank of population size follows the smoking
trend against the same. The enormous range of county population (700 to 5.3
million)is selectively (and fortuitously) condensed in the rank plot such that
the LC and smoking plots are ~linear.

Sincerely
chris.hofmeyr at webmail.co.za 




On Tue, 20 Sep 2011 13:20:35 -0400 "Bernard L. Cohen" <blc at pitt.edu> wrote

> My analyses excluded the retirement states, Florida, California, and
> Arizona, although including them did not change the results. I did
> present evidence that movement of people was not a serious problem, but
> I do not remember the details; it gave data on distance from death
> location to where most of their lives were spent. I can look this up if
> you consider it to be very important.
> 
> On 9/19/2011 7:20 PM, Brennan, Mike (DOH) wrote:
> > Another confounder, I would expect, is the movement of people.  For
> > example, my in-laws moved to a retirement home near us, about two years
> > before my mother-in-law died (not of cancer).  Any statistics pegged to
> > the county in which she died would introduce error into any study other
> > than one about end-of-life care, as the conditions in this county have
> > nothing to do with here long term health.  I would estimate that well
> > over half of the people at this large retirement facility are from out
> > of the county, and not a few from out of the state.  This effect has to
> > be even greater for places like Florida.
> >
> > The unlikely political bedfellows of Hilary Clinton and Newt Gingrich
> > have teamed up to support a national health records program (though
> > neither has spoken much about it recently).  The cost savings, both in
> > lives and in money, would be substantial, but I see even greater
> > possibilities in terms of being able to get MUCH better data for studies
> > such as this.  Imagine if instead of estimates of smoking prevalence you
> > could CONTROL for smoking habits of the case and control cohorts.
> >
> > There are people who contend that such a system is too much of an
> > intrusion into privacy, and that the couple tens of thousands of people
> > who die each year due to incomplete or inaccessible medical records is a
> > fair price to pay.  While I don't think they are right, I think they
> > will probably win until the Facebook generation takes the lead.
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu
> > [mailto:radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu] On Behalf Of Bernard L.
> > Cohen
> > Sent: Monday, September 19, 2011 3:55 PM
> > To: Chris Hofmeyr
> > Cc: radsafe at agni.phys.iit.edu; WesVanPelt at verizon.net
> > Subject: Re: [ RadSafe ] Cohen's radon results differently
> >
> > To do anything, I would need some credible source of smoking prevalence
> > data. I tried several and they did not change my results. Please suggest
> >
> > an alternative.
> >
> > On 9/18/2011 3:31 PM, Chris Hofmeyr wrote:
> >>
> >> Radsafers,
> >> On 19th June Howard Long challenged my reminder that in Cohen's
> > US-wide study
> >> of domestic radon and lung cancer, there was, on average, a negative
> >> correlation between Cohen's smoking prevalence and the average county
> > radon
> >> concentration. Howard wanted numbers.
> >> On 20th June prof Cohen invited further discussion of his work.  
> > etc.


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