Re: Critics Allege Infant Mortality Rate

[Bob Flood <bflood@SLAC.Stanford.EDU>]

>> This new allegation was raised by Joseph Mangano in October 1998 and
again
>> earlier this year in an article - "Improvements in local infant health
>> after nuclear power reactor closing"- in Environmental Epidemiology and
>> Toxicology.  In the article, Mangano said:  "Immediately after the
(Rancho
>> Seco) reactor closed, local rates of deaths from all causes, deaths from
>> congenital anomalies, and cancer cases declined faster than the U.S.
>> average.

This study included the population around Rancho Seco in all directions.
Most of the area is agricultural country and sparsely populated (relatively
speaking). On the other hand, all of Sacremento was included. The author
acknowledges that Sacremento is upwind of the plant but included the data
anyway, with no specific basis for the inclusion. However, the population of
Sacremento is so large that the study's findings about infant mortality are
basically the characteristocs of Sacremento (there weren't enough others
outside Sacremento in the study to counter the dominant effect of the
population selection). Consequently, the study found that infant mortality
didn't decrease as fast as the national average in a city upwind from the
plant. Guess why the Sacremento data were included - the infant mortality
rate isn't likely to decrease at the national average rate in every city
uniformly, is it. So the study found a city where the rate didn't decrease
as fast as some other places, a phenomenon that is not only possible, it's
inevitable.

And now it's getting national TV coverage using a spokesmodel's ability to
get on talk shows.

Remember - we keep talking about science, and they keep talking about their
religeon.
============================
Bob Flood
Dosimetry Group Leader
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
bflood@slac.stanford.edu


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