Cancer vs Radon U curve - Has Iowa the right (pun) 1%?

[hflong@postoffice.pacbell.net]

Dear Carl and all,



What do you think of this visualization of Field's Iowa lung cancer

cases predictably having more home radon (circa, about 5pCi/l) than Iowa

controls (c4 pCi/l) - but all having MORE radon and LESS lung cancer

than USA mean (c 1.25 pCi/l)?



Look at Cohen's hundreds of U graphs (calculating hundreds of

confounders).

Note that Iowa (highest 1% county means for home radon), is on the right

botton of those "U"s. Iowans exposed to c4 pCi/l ("controls")seem to

have less lung ca than those exposed to c5, but  99% of the country

receives LESS radon - and has MORE lung cancer (corrected for age,

smoking etc, etc).

 

This suggests to me a radon deficiency for most of the country.



Also, Becker's BELLE data suggest less arthritis inflammation and less

heart disease with even higher radon (10pCi/l or c370 Bq/cubic meter),

as at spas.



Howard Long

  

BERNARD L COHEN wrote:

> 

> On Mon, 5 May 2003, Carl Miller wrote:

> 

> Also, I think it has been pointed out on this list, before that Dr. Cohen

>  fails to consider the interaction between all the colinear factors that can

>  work together such as smoking, education, and socioeconomic status at one time.

>   These factors are very inter related and Dr. Cohen looks at his potentially

>  confounding factors in a univariate manner rather than a multivariable manner

>  which would be required to capture the effect.

> 

>         --This specific problem is addressed in Section 3.3 of Item #7 on

> my web site. In fact your questions are more broadly answered in all of

> Section 3 of that paper

> > Dr. Cohen may not think it is plausible to explain his findings just by his use of guestimated county smoking rates(which are inversely related to the radon), but what about the co-linearity between smoking, education and socioeconomic factors? Dr. Field has pointed this out before.

> >

> > In addition, I think it was Drs. Lubin and Field that showed when better data

>  was for lung cancer incidence the inverse assocaition was not found in Iowa

>  (a s tate with high radon).  Dr. Cohen has never explained this finding in a

>  satisfactory manner.

> 

>         --Statistics for the entire U.S. are far more robust than

> statistics for a single state. There are a few states where the slope of

> the regression of lung cancer on radon levels is not negative, but for the

> great majority of states it is negative, and the average of slopes for all

> states is negative and close to that obtained for the entire U.S. This

> difference among different states is easily understood as due to

> statistics. See Table 4 of Item #2 on my web site.

> 

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