RE: Lung cancer mortality from radon versus mortality from other cancers

[Sonter Mark <sonterm@EPA.NSW.GOV.AU>]

Dear various unidentified 'Dons',



Well, I've been an RSO in uranium mines, and have followed the epi studies

over a couple of decades; I don't doubt that radon daughters cause lung

cancers, but I have to tell you that the risk estimates produced by the

various miner epi studies and meta-studies are deficient because they almost

always fail, mostly don't even try, to take into account other in-mine

airborne contaminants, such as the already-mentioned silica, nickel dust,

arsenic dust, diesel soot, NOx, etc. etc.  Now, all of these will be in

general terms correlated negatively with mine ventilation effectiveness, as

will radon daughter concentration.....So, across the population of all

mines, radon daughters and other nasties will tend to go up and down

together.... Question is, how much of the risk of lung cancer arises from

RnD, and how much from from other nasties??



Those of us that have been around for some time (like Phil Duport) will

remember the larger-than-life Al Dory excoriating Ed Radford for not facing

this issue in his study of the Swedish iron ore miners.



Mark Sonter



	-----Original Message-----

	From:	Rad health [SMTP:healthrad@HOTMAIL.COM]

	Sent:	Friday, 18 January 2002 12:10

	To:	radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu

	Subject:	RE: Lung cancer mortality from radon versus

mortality from other cancers



	Michael Ford,



	Regarding your email below.  From your tone, you really sound a bit

agitated 

	about this issue. But, our guess is what really bothers you is not

the 

	quality of the miner studies, but that the LNT is used to

extrapolate risks 

	down from them - are we right?  But, really haven't we known for a

very long 

	time that something in the mines was killing people.  No

epidemiologic study 

	could ever perfectly record all the exposures, but the researchers

from 

	various parts of the world likely strive to do the best science they

can in 

	the time periods the various studies were performed.  What you can

not help 

	but notice is a pattern among all these studies (performed by

different 

	researchers in various parts of the world) that show an increasing

positive 

	trend with radon exposure that was estimated in various ways.  If it

was 

	merely some other factor like silica, then it would also have to be

in all 

	the mines and co-correlate with radon.



	





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