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Published on: December 14, 2017
Mortality of Enlisted Men Who Served on Nuclear-Powered Submarines in the United States Navy
George Friedman-Jimenez1, Ikuko Kato, Pam Factor-Litvak
1Bellevue/NYU Occupational Environmental Medicine Clinic (Dr Friedman-Jimenez); New York University Grossman School of Medicine (Dr Friedman-Jimenez, Dr Shore); Karmanos Cancer Institute, Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan (Dr Kato); Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University (Dr Factor-Litvak), New York, New York.
Objective:
To describe the long-term mortality experience of a cohort of enlisted men who served on nuclear-powered submarines in the United States Navy and breathed recirculated filtered air for extended periods of time.
Methods:
In this historical cohort study we estimated standardized mortality ratios (SMRs) and used within-cohort Poisson regression analyses to address healthy worker biases.
Results:
Three thousand two hundred sixty three deaths occurred among 85,498 men during 1,926,875 person-years of follow-up from 1969 to 1995. SMRs were reduced for most cause-of-death categories, prostate cancer had a twofold elevation. In within-cohort comparisons, prostate cancer mortality did not increase with duration of submarine service, but ischemic heart disease mortality increased 26% per 5 years of submarine service.
Conclusions:
Long periods of submarine service do not increase mortality in most cause-of-death categories. Increased mortality from ischemic heart disease likely reflects the effects of tobacco smoke.
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