Re: Lung Cancer and Radon

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

November 13, 1998

Thanks to Fritz Seiler and Joe Alvarez for the very thoughtful recent posts.

With regard to Bernie Cohen's analysis of the radon/lung-cancer
relationships in the U.S. ecological data, the ecological fallacy does not
apply (as Cohen has emphasized) if LNT is true. This is because LNT
predicts that the risk is the same no matter how the dose is distributed.
Hence, Cohen's analysis shows that the LNT does not work for radon
exposures in the home. The only possible way to attack this finding is to
suggest that it is the result of some mysterious unknown cross-level
confounding factor that we have yet to discover.

Otto
		*****************************************************
		Prof. Otto G. Raabe, Ph.D., CHP
              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
		E-mail ograabe@ucdavis.edu
              *****************************************************
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