Re: Request of Information

[JMUCKERHEIDE@delphi.com]

All this is true, but doesn't deal at all with the confounding factors of
other pollutants in the early mines, which have been found to be MUCH more
toxic/carcinogenic than radon. So if miners don't get ANY lung cancer unless
they smoke, its not radon, but its also not, eg, SiO, etc alone. But if the
smokers get lung cancer at rates higher than non-miner smokers, and SiO at the 
concentrations in early mines is many times more toxic/carcinogenic than
radon, why are we justified in ascribing the "cause" to radon? 

Then, *even in the smokers*, there is no excess lung cancer in the vast number 
of miners exposed to less than about 1000 times average home-radon
concentrations! Yet we ascribe fear of radiation to radon in home
concentrations in order to con the public. (Kind of like the radium-exposed
population: the "model" ignores all the 95% of the 1000s of persons in the
population below the then-estimated 50 uCi systemic Ra uptake, about 250 uCi
ingestion, equivalent to about 1000 rad to the bone, to draw a straight line
to zero. Scientifically disingenuous :-)  Then we set a 5 pCi/L drinking water 
limit, more than 100,000 times below the 250 uCi ingestion for a lifetime
(though the dial painters and medical patients, etc usually got most of theirs 
in a year or 2. 

But:  Why only "mis-treat" the radium population when the radon population can 
generate so much more "interest"? small investment, large return  :-) 

Thanks.

Regards, Jim

> At 12:44 PM 2/26/97 -0600, you wrote:
> >There is no evidence that miners were affected, though there is some
> reason to 
> >*suspect* there could be some effect at the highest doses.
> 
> I recall a lecture from years ago (early 80's) in which it was stated that
> lung cancer data in uranium miners was inconclusive when taken as a whole.
> But when the data were segregated into smoking and non-smoking groups,
> there was no detectable lung cancer among non-smokers above the control
> group, but there was a clearly identifiable increasing among smokers, even
> over a control group of smokers. It was presented as an example of the
> "promotional effect" one agent may have when combined with another, in
> which the promotional agent may not be a direct cause of the illness but
> may work in concert with another agent to produce illness at a rate not
> observed with either agent alone.
> 
> 
> Bob Flood