RE: Apparent anti-correlations between geographic radiation and cancer are no...

[BERNARD L COHEN <blc+@PITT.EDU>]

On Thu, 9 Jan 2003, Doug Aitken wrote:

>

> 1: Surely all efforts at correlating the data in the US will be somewhat

> confused by the relative mobility of the population? i was surprised to see

> no one looking beyond the US to some regions with greater natural radiation.



	--The average American who dies outside of Florida, Arizona, and

California has spent 70% of his lifetime in his county of residence at

time of death, and 80% of his lifetime in his state of residence at time

of death.



> 3: With the multiplicity of potentially adverse agents introduced in a

> "developed" society, surely these will make any study of the effects of

> radiation on cancer incidence very tenuous at best? how would you isolate

> all these (I think this has been mentioned a number of times).



	--That is why most of the discussion on this thread has been

nonsense. If you choose just a few regions to study -- like Rocky

Mountain, Gulf Coast, and New England -- there are innumerable potential

confounding factors that can be involved. Also, even in LNT, only 1% of

all cancers are due to background radiation, whereas variations in cancer

rates among states approaches 50%; Obviously, radiation has nothing to do

with the observed differences.

	The solution to this is my approach of studying lung cancer in

U.S. Counties vs radon exposure. For starters, according to LNT about 10%

of lung cancers are due to radon, so this is already a 10-fold advantage.

More important, my study involves 1600 counties which allows very

elaborate treatment of confounding factors. This treatment is reviewed in

paper #7 on my web site,   www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc





> 4: Common sense would tend to argue against exposure to any quantity of

> man-made agent - in whatever quantity - which has known adverse effects.



	--Get real. Every human activity causes exposure to such agents.

Fossil fuel burning causes air pollution -- should we stop burning fossil

fuels? Transportation causes deaths in accidents -- should we all stay

home all the time?



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