Re:

[JMUCKERHEIDE@delphi.com]

Sue,

Rowland (Director, Center for Human Radiobiology, Argonne) 1989, BIR, reports
that in 1261 female dial painters (discounting the 62 high-dose bone sarcoma
and nasal carinoma cases): 

All-cause mortality:  obs=337  exp=382.3   SMR=0.88  (p<0.05)
All malignant neoplasms:    obs=94    exp=84.7   SMR=1.11
Buccal cavity and pharynx:   obs=1   exp=1.2    SMR=0.83
Note that:
All circ system disease:   obs=168   exp=222.6   SMR=0.75 (p<0.01)
All resp system disease:   obs=16   exp=16.5   SMR=0.91
All digestive system disease:   obs=9   exp=13.1   SMR=0.69

> > From:          "Sue M. Dupre" <dupre@phoenix.princeton.edu>
> > To:            Multiple recipients of list <radsafe@romulus.ehs.uiuc.edu>
> 
> > He launched into an explanation of the history of radium dial painting and
> > made the statement that "... every one of the girls and women developed
> > cancers of the tongue, throat or some other kind of oral cancer!"  I
> > don't actually know the incidence of oral cancers among that population
> > (though I do remember that there's been previous discussion on RADSAFE
> > about the limited incidence of BONE cancer amond the dial painters), but
> > that sounded very wrong, so I challenged him. 
> 
>         Good! He' s on the wrong end of a typical urban legend.
> 
>         I got the following from a web search.
> 
>                 radium poisoning ref
> 
> 3 May 1994
> 
> For documentation on the radium poisoning story, see
> the following references supplied by Stan Schwarz.
> 
> Terry Chan