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Re: RADSAFE digest 3135
Hi
I'll answer what I can. Comments in the dashes --------
Steven Dapra wrote:
> 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.
> ----- The book is currently with a local newspaper reporter. I'll get it back monday
> and see what citations are there. Book is available at the RPHP website,
> www.radiation.org
If I were Gould et al, I'd gladly send you a free copy. --------
>
> 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 term "Huge" increases come from RPHP and the NJ Breast Cancer Coalition from
public events. No I don't have specific citations. Is 53% over 39 years huge? To every
woman who has breast cancer it sure is. And with other cancers going down, with other
diseases being conquered, why is this one rising? So yes, I'd still say "huge".
--------
>
> 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.
> ----- Good that sr-90 got in there. This is one of the basic points of the TF
> Project, not that
radiation causes breast cancer rises by itself, but that it acts in synergy with these
other toxins ------
>
> 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.
>
---- I don't know where reactors would be in N Mex, unless he's including Los Alamos.
And it's still an increase, when one would think there would be a decline. -------
>
> 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.
> ------- Arrogance is defeating from anyone, including Gould.--------
Norm
>
> Steven Dapra
> sjd@swcp.com
>
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--
Coalition for Peace and Justice and the UNPLUG Salem Campaign; 321 Barr Ave., Linwood,
NJ 08221; 609-601-8537 or 609-601-8583 (8583: fax, answer machine);
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FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE WEBSITE: http://members.bellatlantic.net/~norco/ ICQ#
54268619; The Coalition for Peace and Justice is a chapter of Peace Action.
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information can be accessed at http://www.ehs.uiuc.edu/~rad/radsafe.html