Healthy Worker Effect and Nuclear Shipyard Workers Study

["Cuttler, Jerry" <CuttlerJ@spkb.candu.aecl.ca>]

Does anyone know what was compared in the study on 700,000 nuclear shipyard 
workers, carried out by the US Dept of Energy?

Did it compare the incidence of fatal cancer in workers who were exposed to 
ionizing radiation with the incidence in workers who were not exposed?  What 
were the results?

I suppose the people in both groups were "healthy workers".

Jerry Cuttler
 ----------
From: radsafe
To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: Re: Healthy Worker Effect
Date: Friday, March 22, 1996 3:59PM

The "healthy worker" effect is, as indicated, based on the fact that the
worker population does not include the very young and the very old, 
mortality
and morbidity rates among whom are very much greater than those for the age
groups between (say) 18 and 62 which are representative of the vast majority
of individuals in the worker population.  Thus, comparisons of morbidity or
mortality rates of worker populations with those of the general public are
not valid UNLESS those rates are adjusted to recognize the differences in 
age
distributions (and hence age-related health effects) in the two populations.

Mort Goldman