RE: Field's comments on Cohen's Observation

[Peter.Thomas@health.gov.au]

At 05:18 AM 6/23/03 +0200, Gary Howard wrote:



>I think I understand this from what Dr. Fields tried to explain to us

>before, I think he means that while lung cancer incidence and radon

>exposure are linear in the relative risk according to the LNT, they

>are not linearly related in the scale of absolute risk.

***************************************************************8

June 23, 2003



Can someone explain what is meant by this statement? It seems to me that if

there is another source of risk, the radon portion is still linear under

LNT although the total risk is not proportional to the radon risk.



I presume the point is that radon exposure acts as a multiplier of the

otherwise "underlying" risk.  Since smokers are at a higher risk of

lung cancer than non-smokers, a given radon exposure will result

in a much larger lung cancer rate among smokers than an

otherwise similar group of non-smokers.


Peter Thomas

ARPANSA