Neither shows the benefit Becker reports from European studies (RR or odds ratio below 1.0) for radon at twice to 4 times the average USA radon level in USA homes.
I hope Becker can find the raw data and comment. Becker originated the glass radon-measuring device while at ORNL.
Howard Long
Kai Kaletsch wrote:
Friends,Dr. Lagarde, one of the authors of the Glass-Based Radon-Exposure Assessment
and Lung Cancer Risk paper, has kindly commented on my previous posting. His
comment is given below. I wonder if any RadSafers would care to comment?Personally, I don't see why one can calculate a relative risks of a combined
data set, but not odds ratios. I always thought that, given a relative risk,
one can predict what the odds ratio should be. Then the question becomes: If
the relative risk is so large, why is the odds ratio so low for high radon
exposure categories?Best Regards,
Kai----- Original Message -----
From: "Frederic Lagarde" <Frederic.Lagarde@imm.ki.se>
To: <epirad@mchsi.com>; "Kai Kaletsch" <info@eic.nu>; "RadSafe"
<radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu>
Sent: Saturday, October 12, 2002 4:42 AM
Subject: Re: Glass-Based Radon Measurements (fwd)> Dear Kai,
>
> Thank you for your interest in our study and for calculated the odds
ratios
> from the raw table data.
> However such calculations do not make sense when different studies (data
> from different centres) are combined, as is presently the case.
> Please, transmit a copy of this to previous recipients of your message,
and specify this anywhere else your previous comments appear.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Frederic Lagarde
>
> At 15:25 2002-10-11 +0000, you wrote:
> >For your interest. This was posted on the Radsafe
> >Radiaiton list tody.
> >---------------------- Forwarded Message: ---------------------
> >From: Kai Kaletsch <info@eic.nu>
> >To: RadSafe <radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu>
> >Subject: Re: Glass-Based Radon Measurements
> >Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2002 15:16:50 -0600
> >
> >Friends,
> >
> >For those interested in Radon, I have calculated the odds ratios from the
> >data given in the first 2 rows of Table 4 of the Lagarde et al. paper and
> >graphed them. These rows give the number of cases and controls as a
function
> >of radon concentrations as assessed by air based and surface based
> >measurements respectively. The graph can be seen at
> >http://members.shaw.ca/eic/odds.pdf
> >Also shown on the graph (dashed lines) are the relative risks as reported
by the authors.
> >To me at least, it seems that the raw odds tell a different story than
the RR values.
> >
> >Please let me know if I made any mistakes in calculating the odds ratios.
> >
> >Kai
> >http://www.eic.nu
> >and http://www.gammawatch.com/