Re: Radon and Smoking

[BERNARD L COHEN <blc+@PITT.EDU>]

On Tue, 12 Feb 2002, Field, R. William wrote:



> Kai,   We previously showed (Smith et al. 1998 and elsewhere:

> http://www.lww.com/health_physics/0017-90789-99ltrs.html) that when Cohen's

> adjusted smoking percentages for males and females were regressed on radon

> levels, significant (p < 0.00001) negative associations between smoking and

> radon were noted for both males and females. Remember, Dr. Cohen's

> correlations are at the county aggregate level.  We have performed numerous

> studies looking at current smoking and radon for individuals and did not

> find any correlation whatsoever.   This include not finding a correlation

> between current smoking and radon in the Iowa Radon Lung Cancer Study.  So

> in this particular case, the ecologic finding does not equal the individual

> level finding.



	--There is no reason why this ecological finding should equal the

individual level finding, and I have never claimed that any ecological

finding should equal an individual finding. Correlations come up for

non-causal reasons in any data, and one would be hard pressed to explain

the smoking vs radon correlation for U.S. counties as a causal

relationship. The reason for the very small p-value is that there are so

many data pooints. The actual correlation is not very large, something

like 15%.

	On the other hand, there is a disagreement between the radon vs

smoking in the Iowa study and my individual level study in Health Physics

60:631-642;1991- Tables 2 & 3. My study involves many tens of thousands of

measurements, far more than the Iowa study



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