Re: Suggestion for Dr. Cohen

[Bernard L Cohen <blc+@pitt.edu>]

On Tue, 7 Mar 2000 FIELDRW@aol.com wrote:

> Dr. Cohen,
> 
> I certainly do not feel you adequately addressed our concern #2 below or our 
> previous concerns in the joint publications. I am still puzzled why your 
> estimated mean county smoking rates are so inversely related to your mean 
> county radon concentrations? 

	--This correlation is favorable for verifying LNT. If smoking
rates were positively correlated, my correction for smoking would have
increased the discrepancy with LNT. The negative correlation I adopted
reduced the discrepancy. The effects of various assumed correlations
between smoking prevalence and mean radon levels are presented in my 1995
paper. If the negative correlation were perfect, the discrepancy with LNT
would have been cut in half.  


>  However, in keeping with the spirit of your 
> most recent request, I will rephrase one of my concerns according to your 
> format.   
> 
> I suggest that your observation that lung cancer rates in U.S. counties 
> decreases with increasing radon exposure in those counties, in sharp contrast 
> to the prediction of BEIR-IV (or BEIR VI) linear-no threshold theory that 
> lung cancer rates should increase might be explained by the fact that you are 
> not testing the BEIR-IV (or BEIR VI) linear-no threshold theory.    
	

    -- My derivation of the formula I was testing is given in my paper in
Health Physics 68:157-174;1995. The mathematical derivation is given in
Sections B and C, and in the lengthy mathematical Appendix A. Can you
suggest where this derivation falls short of being convincing? This
derivation starts with the BEIR-IV formula for risk vs dose to
individuals, and develops a prediction of lung cancer rates vs average
radon levels for counties.

Bernard L. Cohen
Physics Dept.
University of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, PA 15260
Tel: (412)624-9245
Fax: (412)624-9163


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