Re: Radon and Lung Cancer: What the studies really say.

[Kai Kaletsch <eic@shaw.ca>]

From: "BERNARD L COHEN" <blc+@pitt.edu>



> --These two statements refer to different ranges of radon

> exposure. #1 refers to radon levels below 3 pCi/L. There is very little

> evidence that case-control studies support your #2 in that dose region.



pCi/L is not a unit of dose or exposure. It is a unit of concentration. You

may be able to argue that pCi/L from your data can be used as a proxy

measurement for average exposure in a county to do a test on LNT, but you

can not use it as a measure of personal exposure. You can not say which

"dose region" your studies give us insight into, because you cannot measure

dose.



While I personally tend to agree with your assessment that the case control

studies are not very strong in the low region. There are certainly people

who claim to see increasing relative risk with increasing radon exposure.

See for example:



http://members.shaw.ca/eic/odds.pdf



This goes down to 50 Bq/m3. I have mentioned my personal reservations about

this particular study on radsafe before. For this thread, however, I assumed

that everyone collected and analyzed the data correctly.



The main difference between ranges of the case control and the ecological

data is not in the magnitude of the value on the x-axis. It is the dimension

of the x-axis. One is radon exposure, the other is average county radon

concentration.



Kai





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