Re: Radon and Smoking (individual vs aggregate)

["Field, R. William" <bill-field@UIOWA.EDU>]

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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