Re: A question of statistical significance vs operational significance

[epirad@mchsi.com]

Maury,



You stated, 



" When thinking about the increasing weight of

evidence favoring beneficial health effects from 

exposure to low level radiation (such as household 

radon), I cannot bring myself to get very concerned about

the EPA radon campaign."



Maury, other than Dr. Cohen's data, which he himself 

says does not suggest hormesis (to do so he says would 

make his findings subject to the ecologic fallacy), can 

you point me to any well designed study that 

demonstrates residential radon exposure decreases lung 

cancer risk?



Please see this reference for my view of this issue: 

http://www.ntp.org.uk/951-TUD.pdf



Bill Field

> 

> 

> Bill, thanks for taking the trouble to refer me to relevant data. My

> impressions, however, are that you folks are suggesting with an

> epidemiological risk factor of 0.5, that out of an annual total lung

> cancer

> incidence of 157,400 cases, 18,600 or about 12% are attributable to

> radon. I

> don't believe those radon cases could hope to be distinguished from the

> noise

> or error variance.  When thinking about the increasing weight of

> evidence

> favoring beneficial health effects from exposure to low level radiation

> (such

> as household radon), I cannot bring myself to get very concerned about

> the EPA

> radon campaign -- except for some of my darker suspicions which already

> have

> been well-fed over the years by the performance of EPA. I just cannot

> view

> radon as a threat and I suspect it might even be beneficial to us.

> Perhaps my

> ignorance, but time will tell after I'm long gone.

> 

> Thanks again for your response to me.

> Sincerely,

> Maury                   maury@webtexas.com

> ================================

> epirad@mchsi.com wrote:

> 

> > Maury,

> >

> > Our direct observations

> > http://www.cheec.uiowa.edu/misc/radon.html are in

> > agreement with the BEIR VI

> > (http://www.epa.gov/iaq/radon/beirvi1.html)projections

> > which estimate that approximately 18,600 lung cancer

> > deaths each year in the United States are associated

> > with prolonged radon progeny exposure.

> >

> > Bill Field

> > > Bill,

> > >

> > > Would you select an objective, reliable measure of the impact of

> > > cancer on human health, e.g., mortality, morbidity, longevity, etc. and

> > > tell me what that observation is today in perhaps the US, or the world,

> > > or Iowa, or whatever? Then, if we could suddenly cause all radon and its

> > >

> > > progeny to disappear completely from the earth while all other

> > > conditions remain unchanged, what do you see in any hard data, or

> > > believe would be the observed effect or change in that selected cancer

> > > measurement in, say, 20 years or so?

> > > Cheers,

> > > Maury Siskel           maury@webtexas.com

> 

> ------------------

> It is the soldier, not the campus organizer, who has given us the

> freedom to demonstrate.                       Charles M. Province

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