Healthy Worker Effect

["William G. Nabor" <wgnabor@uci.edu>]

Radsafers,
   Would an example of a healthy worker effect help?   Darell Huff, in his
book _How to Lie with Statistics_ [which ought to be required reading for
every high-school student] gave a beauty:

   It seems that the death rate (number of people dead per year per 100,000
population) during World War II was greater for New York City than for the
US troops fighting Hitler in Europe.  Does this mean that it was safer in
the Army than in the Big Apple?  Hardly.  The population of New York
included the aged, sick, and all manner of people who die at a much greather
rate than young, healthy "workers" selected for the Army (which people, by
the way, were depleted from New York during this period, increasing the
effect even more).
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William G. Nabor
University of California, Irvine
EH&S Office
Irvine, CA,  92697-2725
WGNABOR@UCI.EDU
mailto:wgnabor@uci.edu
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