Radon and Smoking

[Kai Kaletsch <info@eic.nu>]

Drs Cohen and Field,



Sorry, I'm still hung up on understanding the smoking - radon relationship.

To me, the mechanism is all important. If it is a causal relationship, one

would expect the 0.9 ratio of radon in smoker's houses to radon in

non-smokers houses to become 1.0 once the smoker quits smoking. If it is

some socio-economic effect, the 0.9 ratio would remain as long as the

(ex)smoker remains in his/her house, regardless of current smoking status.



If radon measurements for cases in a case-control study are made after the

case quits smoking or when only non-smoking relatives are living in the

residence, then the radon exposure assessment would overestimate the actual

historical radon exposure of the smoking cases. If we subtracted 10% from

the geometric mean radon concentration of the cases (almost all ever

smokers) in the Iowa study, the difference between cases and controls would

be eliminated.



Dr Cohen:



Do you have any data which would indicate if the smoking-radon association

is causal or not? For example, is the radon concentration in ex-smokers

houses similar to that in smokers homes or to that in non-smokers homes?



Dr Field:



Do you have the smoking status of the "ever smokers" at the time the radon

measurements were made, or, when the case no longer lived in the residence,

the smoking status of the people in the house?



Thank you,



Kai Kaletsch



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

From: "BERNARD L COHEN" <blc+@PITT.EDU>

To: "Kai Kaletsch" <info@eic.nu>

Cc: "Philippe Duport" <pduport@uottawa.ca>; "Rad health"

<healthrad@HOTMAIL.COM>; <radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu>

Sent: Tuesday, January 29, 2002 11:04 AM

Subject: Re: Re: Cohen's Fallacy





>

> On Mon, 28 Jan 2002, Kai Kaletsch wrote:

>

> > Understanding the mechanism helps you fill in gaps in the data. Suppose

that

> > the relationship: "smokers have 0.9 times the radon concentration of

> > non-smokers" is based mainly on screening measurements performed in

> > basements. If you don't care about the "why", you might be tempted to

> > conclude that this can be translated directly into an exposure

relationship.

>

> --The 0.9 applies separately to basement measurements and to

> living area measurements, and in both cases, to various areas of the

> country. See my paper in Health Physics 60:631ff;1991 which also contains

> info on other matters discussed in this message.





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