Re: New Steve Wing Study

[Muckerheide <muckerheide@mediaone.net>]

Otto G. Raabe wrote:
> 
> February 4, 1998
> Davis, CA
> 
> In answer to Julian, the tobacco industry analogy is not appropriate.
> There
> are some really excellent studies of the health of radiation workers
> that
> health physicists can quote. It is just the seriously biased and
> flawed
> studies (which includes all the Wing papers) to which we object.
> 
> For some good stuff try:
> 
> Ethel Gilbert, "Radiation worker epidemiology and risk," Chapter 19 in
> RADIATION PROTECTION AT NUCLEAR REACTORS, (C.J. Maletskos, Ed.),
> Medical
> Physics Publishing Co., 1995.
> 
> IARC, International Agency for Research on Cancer, Study Group on
> Cancer
> Risk among Nuclear Industry Workers, "Direct estimates of cancer
> mortality
> due to low doses of ionizing radiation: an international study,"
> LANCET
> 344, 1039-1043 (1994).
>
> Otto

Actually, IARC is just like Wing. "Prove" the linear model with
misrepresentation of the data, conduct a public relations campaign months
before the data is available (specifically the Lancet article), long before
the data was published in Rad Res, and get it picked up everywhere before the
scientific review. Ethyl Gilbert was an author! To her credit, she later
wouldn't state to the NCRP meeting when she reported on this study that this
bogus result supported the LNT. But in the conclusion of the meeting Warren
Sinclair said it for her.

Among a number of strong criticisms, this is from my Sep 95 NN article:

  "Myron Pollycove notes that a recent report by the International Association
for Research on Cancer (IARC) similarly misrepresents dose-response data
to report a linear model result. The IARC report chooses to ignore data
that show lower risk, i.e., a risk decrement. First, in this combined
occupational exposure group, it chooses to ignore the most accurate data, the
NSWS, compared with the early weapons facility workers with their questionable
dosimetry and confounding factors. Then, in a population of 15,825 total
deaths, IARC reports on 119 leukemia deaths, excluding non-radiogenic
leukemia. The data show that there are 60 deaths observed with 62.0 expected
for doses of less than 1cSv, and 59 deaths observed, with 57.0 expected for
doses greater than 1.0 cSv (see Table 2). Clearly, there is no excess leukemia
found in these data.

Table 2 IARC Observed/Expected Leukemia (except CLL) Mortality
        (119 deaths in 15,825 total deaths)
--------------------------------------------------------------
   Cumulative        Deaths
   Dose (cSv)        (Observed/Expected)
   ----------        -------------------
   0  -  1           60 / 62.0
   1  -  2           19 / 17.2 *
   2  -  5           14 / 17.4
   5  - 10            8 /  9.0
   10 - 20            8 /  6.4 *
   20 - 40            4 /  4.7
     > 40             6 /  2.3 *
--------------------------------------------------------------
  * Greater-than-expected leukemias.  Note: for this table,
    11 dose categories were collapsed to 7 (without explanation)

  "Pollycove notes that the IARC report states explicitly in the "Statistical
Methods" section that they applied (they presumed) the linear model
across 11 dose categories, and that "As there was no reason to suspect
that exposure to radiation would be associated with a decrease in risk
one-sided tests are presented throughout." This states that they explicitly
ignore all negative data. For the table, the 11 dose categories were collapsed
to 7, resulting in greater-than-expected leukemias in three of the seven dose
groups (the * in Table 2). Since only positive data are allowed to be
considered, only the data from the three greater-than-expected dose groups are
used, even though these dose groups are not even contiguous. Since the
selected data are not significant, the IARC performs a Monte Carlo calculation
on 5000 trials (effectively multiplying the data by roughly a factor of 100)
to "find" that the results show a "significant" linear dose-response "trend."
  "This "result" was then the subject of a worldwide media campaign,
reasonably reported even in Nuclear News, that the linear model is confirmed.
This report was widely distributed long before the data and analysis were
published and available for review.
  "IARC also reports that the 44 multiple myeloma deaths are similarly found
"significant," noting that this is "attributable primarily
to the associations reported previously in the Hanford and Sellafield
cohorts." This note indicates that they are aware, without so stating, that
this "association" is not found in other cohorts and is generally
considered to be erroneous in these studies, consistent with the weakness
in the dosimetry and the confounding effects. (The study reports that cancer
relative risk is 0.99 and leukemia is 1.22 at 10 cSv.)
  "Clearly, if all data were considered by IARC without arbitrarily excluding
the contrary data, and presuming the linear model, the mortality data in
these combined populations do not support the linear model. As Don Luckey,
emeritus professor of biochemistry at the University of Missouri, has found,
objectively examining all the data in each of the cohorts indicates
positive/beneficial effects for the exposed populations, a result that would
be reasonably expected to result in a positive (beneficial) effect in the
combined populations.
The IARC, consistent with BEIR, the NCRP, and other government data presentations,
capriciously misrepresents the data to conform to the linear model."

For another view, Dr. Mario Schillacci at LANL wrote a letter to Rad Res, and
reported in an article in "LANL Science"(1995), and in a paper at the ANS
Embedded Topical on LLRHE (1996) that:
	"The distribution of
cumulative doses received by the study population... was rather skewed in
that 60 per cent of the cohort received doses of 1 rem or less and only
about 1 per cent received doses of 50 rem or more. All doses are assumed
to be at low dose rates. Excluded from the study were 19 workers who
received greater than 25 rem in a single year. 
	"The excess relative risk (ERR) for all cancers, excluding leukemia,
was reported to be negative at -7 X 10^-4 per rem, with a 90-per-cent
confidence interval from -39 x 10^-4 to +30 X 10^-4 per rem, which is
consistent with zero risk. For leukemia, excluding chronic lymphocytic
(CL) leukemia, which is thought not to be induced by radiation, the excess
relative risk (ERR) was reported to be positive at 2.2 X 10^-2 per rem,
with a 90-per-cent confidence interval from 0.1 x 10^-2 to 5.7 x 10^-2 per
rem, which is barely significant (the 95-per-cent confidence interval
overlaps zero risk). Taking into account the range of uncertainties, the
quoted results for non-CL leukemia are consistent with those obtained
from a linear extrapolation of the high-dose, high-dose-rate data from the
atomic-bomb survivors, and with a low-dose, low-dose-rate effectiveness 
multiplier of one-half, though the range of uncertainty of this 
multiplier is quite large (0.027-1.7)."

	"The authors of this study give the relative risk (RR) for all
leukemias except CL leukemia for 10-rem exposure as 1.22, which means
that a person exposed to 10 rem of low-LET radiation over a working
lifespan is 22 per cent more likely to die from non-CL leukemia than a
similar, but unexposed worker. This statement would lead the casual
reader to infer that the data at dose levels around 10 rem actually show an
effect. However, an examination of the data presented for all non-CL
leukemia mortality in 7 dose intervals, the last being greater than 40 rem,
shows that for only the last dose interval is a positive effect observed
(Figure 7). [Note: this figs plots the data in the Table 2 above.]

	"The risk factors quoted above are found by forcing a linear fit to all
of the data; however, if the one data point for doses above 40 rem is
excluded, the remaining 6 data points for doses below 40 rem show a flat
response with dose (that is, no increasing risk with dose). The range of
uncertainties in the final results would also seem to allow either a
sublinear or superlinear dose response at low doses, in addition to the
assumed linear response. This very large and careful study of nuclear
workers does not provide a definitive resolution of the problem of
determining the dose response at low doses (less than 20 rem)."

It is unfortunate that $millions go into carefully crafting data to
misrepresent reality in the committed effort to support the LNT, and is simply
accepted, even with a track record of 40 years, documented by the luminaries
of the radiobiology community (including Otto Raabe's own work with radium
that has been studiously misrepresented and ignored in order to promulgate and
defend the LNT (including EPA's 1991 dictum in the Fed Reg that to consider
the raium data would go against their commitment to the LNT). Since public
health can't be protected with such misrepresentations, the only purpose in
ICRP/NCRP/BEIR producing such misrepresentations is to provide the basis for
political support to excessive radiation regulation. In the 50s the LNT was
'accepted' when 100 mrem/week to 5 rem/week were considered acceptable for
workers based on the evidence of many years and $millions for animal and human
research. It mushroomed :-) as part of the political campaign against fallout
to stop above-ground testing. See eg, Henry 1961 in the JAMA, 76:8 671-5 "Is
All Nuclear Radiation Harmful?" and many other sources on data and policy.