Howard,
You are looking at a different ways to interpret risk. Cohen's idea is that the risk of an activity will shorten your life expectancy. This is infromation that can be determined from insurance actuary tables, epidemiological data, etc. The idea is that if working round a nuclear power plant will shorten you life EXPENDANCY by 10 days, smoking will shorten it by 2,200 days (This is a guess as I do not have the article in front of me.) This information was an attempt to communicate risk, e.g., smoking is more dangerous than working in a nuclear power plant.
John Cameron reported (he did not analyze the data) that the relative cancer risk for one group of workers was 0.76 compared to the control group. Personally, I do not think that is a statistically significant difference.
As a physician, I am sure you are aware that poor people, who lack adequate medical care and healthy life style, have a higher death rate.
hflong@postoffice.pacbell.net wrote:
JJ and Fellow Radiation Benefit/Harm Students,
I am puzzled by,"As I interpret the graphs, loss of life expectancy for
being a radiation worker is 10 days" (below). At
http://www.aps.org/units/fps/oct01/a5oct01.html, Cameron, a member of
the TAP of the NSWS, shows Death Rate when >0.5 rem extra to be 0.76 of
similar workers with Zero Dose.
I do understand how povery from wasted $100B from low dose clean-up can
cause deaths.
Howard Long
"Jacobus, John (NIH/OD/ORS)" wrote:
>
> Kai,
> It has been shown many times that economics is an important factor in risk.
> I suggest that you look at the classic report (well, I think it is a classic
> report) written by Dr. Bernard Cohen, "Catalog of Risks Extended and
> Update," Health Physics, 61: 3, Pp 317-335, 1991. It can be found at
> http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~bl! c/Catalog_of_Risks.pdf As Dr. Cohen shows,
> live expectancy is dramatic reduced for those living in the lowest
> socioeconomic level.
> . . .