Re: Radon Health Risks

["field" <bill-field@UIOWA.EDU>]

Kai,



If  there are problems you think should be documented than you should write

a letter to the editor as soon as the article is published.  In most cases,

I do believe more than one measurement was performed.



Nonetheless, I personally prefer the case-control residential studies - no

extrapolation and more control of confounding.



Don



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

From: Kai Kaletsch <info@eic.nu>

To: RadSafe <radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu>

Sent: Saturday, January 19, 2002 9:32 PM

Subject: Re: Radon Health Risks





> 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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