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Re: Radon and Smoking (individual vs aggregate)



Dr. Cohen,

You state, "According to the BEIR Reports, it is easy to show that collective doses determine the number of deaths. This is a property of LNT. Of course, some care is necessary in handling other factors-- collective dose to what group of people, ages, sex, etc. -- but health physicists and risk assessors have been doing this for decades."

That is one of the points I am trying to explore here a bit more is your use of the LNT and collective dose. I guess I don't understand your thinking since average dose determines average risk only for linear models.  If all the correlations were linear, the ecologic model would be fine. How can a county consisting of individuals with very different attributes   (which are unknown to you, but assumes should be known if one is to use collective dose) have a linear response between county radon exposures and lung cancer?

Regarding your reference to BEIR.  Are you interpreting their findings as indicating lung cancer risk is linear in radon exposure and other factors?

Bill Field



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