Re: Healthy Worker Effect

["Otto G. Raabe" <ograabe@ucdavis.edu>]

February 2, 1998
Davis, CA 

Bill Nabor's example (given below) is not appropriate for describing the
healthy worker effect! This is because epidemiologists are careful to match
people by age, sex, socio-economic class, and other factors, if available,
when calculating the age-corrected death rates. The healthy worker effect
is that people of the same age, sex, socio-economic class, and otherwise
similar, seem to have lower death rates from various causes if they are
radiation workers than if they are not. [This matching may not be perfect,
however, if data are not available on smoking habits or other important
potentially confounding factors.]

Otto
*******************************At 12:28 PM 2/2/98 -0600, you Bill Nabor wrote:
>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).
>**********************************************************************

		*****************************************************
		Prof. Otto G. Raabe, Ph.D., CHP
                [President, Health Physics Society, 1997-1998]
		Institute of Toxicology & Environmental Health (ITEH)
		     (Street address: Old Davis Road)
		University of California, Davis, CA 95616
		Phone: 530-752-7754  FAX: 530-758-6140 [NEW AREA CODE]
		E-mail ograabe@ucdavis.edu