Re: Radon Health Risks

[Kai Kaletsch <info@eic.nu>]

Don,



> The miner studies are not ecologic studies.  We can debate the degree of

> exposure misclassification in the miner studies, but variation in radon

and

> progeny in mines does not make the miners studies ecologic in nature.

> Individual exposure information was assigned to each individual



I don't know the textbook definition of ecological study. I have always

assumed that it is when the measured parameter has more variation within the

group the value is assigned to, than among the groups being compared. In

that case, some of the miner studies are ecological.



If your definition of a cohort study (vs ecological) is that individual

doses are assigned, no matter how ridiculous they are, then all Cohen would

have to do is assign one randomly chosen radon reading in each county to

every person in the county and call it a cohort study. To me, that doesn't

make it so.



> Do you really think that 10 county screening radon measurements performed

in

> the basement (not in the living area) and not taken at random are

> representative of the living area radon concentration for everyone in a

> county?  I know some counties with several hundred thousand residences

where

> the radon varies from 0.1 pCi/L to over 300 pCi/L.



Some of the mines had only 1 measurement taken. 0.1 pCi/L to over 300 pCi/L

is not a particularly large range in a mine, plus you have a large

difference in equilibrium factors. Anyway, I don't want to argue about what

is "better". Every study is open to questioning. There are no sacred cows. A

theory should not be accepted before it can explain all data (to within the

limitations of the methodology).



Kai







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