Re: RADSAFE digest 3135

[Steven Dapra <sjd@swcp.com>]

April 29

	Norm Cohen wrote, "The breast cancer stats come from Dr Jay Gould's book
'The Enemy Within' ".  (According to Amazon.com Ernest Sternglass and
Joseph Mangano are co-authors)

	Do you own this book, Norm, and if so can you give some specific citations
that Gould, et. al. use to buttress their claims of increased breast cancer
near nuclear power plants?  I believe I have checked before, and it is not
available at any of the local libraries.

	Also:  "I do recall reading about the huge increases in breast cancer in
this country. I'm sure you all have the stats. The Tooth people would
certainly consider breast cancer as one of the 'soft tissue' cancers that
are affected by emissions from nuke plants."

	What about those "huge" increases?  In an article in the International
Journal of Health Services [24(1):145-50; 1994], Samuel S. Epstein writes
that "incidence rates [for breast cancer] in white women in the United
States from 1950 to 1989 increased by 53 percent, or by over 1 percent
annually."  Is a 53 percent increase in 39 years a "huge" increase?  I am
not saying it is or is not, I am merely asking the question.  (Epstein's
source is the NCI Cancer Statistics Review, 1973-89; NIH Publication No.
92-2789.)

	The title of Epstein's article is "Environmental and Occupational
Pollutants are Avoidable Causes of Breast Cancer."  In part, he blames
organochlorine pesticides for the increase in breast cancer, mentioning in
particular DDT and atrazine.  He also attributes breast cancer to
estrogens, to living near hazardous waste sites, and to "nuclear fission
products," in particular radioactive iodine and Sr-90.

	Let us return to Jay Gould, but first a little background.  In Oct. 1994 a
conference on "Women, Health & the Environment:  Action for Cancer
Prevention" was held in Albuquerque, NM.  The stated purpose of the
conference was to "explore and examine the issues of cancer prevention and
environmental pollution."  Jay Gould, Samuel Epstein, and Steve Wing were
three of the invited speakers and panelists.

	Gould distributed a "proposed op-ed" article written for the conference.
In this article he objected to NCI choosing only 107 counties near power
reactors and DOE installations for a study of cancer incidence.  (This is
the study in JAMA by Jablon, et. al.  Gould thought 175 counties should
have been included in the study.)

	Gould's proposed op-ed article was tailored for Bernalillo County (where
Albuquerque is located), and he wrote:

	"As an example of how the size of any sample of vital statistics affects
its significance, consider the fact that Bernalillo county registered an
age-adjusted white female breast cancer mortality rate of 22.3 deaths per
100,000 women in 1950-54, which rose by 20 percent to 26.7 by 1985-89, as
compared to a national rise of only one percent, from 24.4 to 24.6 [sic].
Now because Bernalillo is a large county, with 342 breast cancer deaths in
1985-89, the probability that so great a rise could be due to chance is
less than one in twenty.  For the 268 counties within 50 miles of nuclear
reactors the age-adjusted breast cancer mortality rates had increased 10
times more than the corresponding national increase since 1950, but since
they registered over 35,000 breast cancer deaths in 1985-89, the
probability that such a divergent trend could be due to chance is
infinitesimal.  And even the 107 counties defined by the NCI as possibly at
risk, in the aggregate registered a 5 percent increase in breast cancer
mortality by 1985-89, which with 16,245 deaths also could not possibly be
the product of chance.  This means that in the absence of a plausible
alternative explanation, emissions from the reactor must be regarded as a
significant contributor to the risk of cancer anywhere in the nation, but
especially near reactors."

	First, that is not a typo on my part -- Gould's article says that 24.4 to
24.6 is a one percent rise.  Second, as I said in an earlier posting I am
not a statistician, and I can't make head nor tail of this.  Finally, I
don't know where Gould is getting his 'reactor emissions' for New Mexico
breast cancers.  As far as I know, there are no power reactors in the
entire state of New Mexico.

	As an interesting aside, during a Conference workshop Gould claimed that
radio-iodine releases from Hanford in 1945 caused a spike of low birth
weight babies in New York state.  When I confronted him about this he
loftily informed me that he was making the claim and didn't have to support
it -- it was up to me to prove him wrong.

Steven Dapra
sjd@swcp.com


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