RE: Shipyard workers etc[Scanned]

["Dr Christoph Hofmeyr" <chofmeyr@nnr.co.za>]

Kai, John Jacobus,

Thanks for your comments.  John, in your response you give some

indication of how the system operated.  From another source (someone

that worked in RP at one of the shipyards) it is clear that the medical

screening was thorough for NWs, the qualification tests were harder,

people with any kind of radiophobia were disqualified from nuclear work

and any NW who developed any form of cancer was immediately taken off,

but could continue as NNW.  He came to the conclusion that unhealthy

workers that would have been eliminated from the work force in the

private sector could stay in the NNW work force at the shipyard, because

it was difficult to fire federal employees with long tenure.  It is

strange that these factors were apparently not picked up by the

designers of the study.  The total study is available at



http://www.osti.gov/bridge/product.biblio.jsp?osti_id=10103020



Sponsler & Cameron wrote up a summary which you could request from John

Cameron

jrcamero@facstaff.wisc.edu



Chris Hofmeyr

chofmeyr@nnr.co.za



-----Original Message-----

From: Kai Kaletsch [mailto:eic@shaw.ca]

Sent: 09 February 2003 06:42

To: Dr Christoph Hofmeyr

Cc: radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu

Subject: Re: Shipyard workers etc[Scanned]





>Chris,



>I think you raise a very important point. If we can identify a

mechanism by

>which sick people are actively moved out of one group and into another,

the

>results of a comparison will be difficult to interpret. You raise the

>possibility that people predisposed to cancer would have been taken out

of

>the nuclear cohort and moved to the non-nuclear one by the medical

screening

>process. I was hoping that someone more familiar with the study would

>comment on this.

>etc

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