Modifiers of lung cancer risk in uranium miners from the Colorado Plateau

Given the scientific consensus that exposure to radon decay products causes lung cancer, most recent studies have focused on the nature of the exposure-response relationship. Since residential radon exposure is now a primary public health issue, a better understanding of the effects of low levels of radon as well as factors modifying risk estimates has become very important. Several factors are shown to affect risk estimates in the latest update of the vital status follow-up (through 1990) and smoking history for the cohort of underground uranium miners in the Colorado Plateau. This analysis confirms earlier results indicating a strong dependence of relative risk estimates upon attained age. Quantitative estimates of relative risk as a function of cumulative exposure to radon decay products (WLM) are provided for three age strata. The non-linearity often reported in the Colorado Plateau data is shown to be at least partially due to an inverse exposure-rate effect, i.e., low exposure rates for long periods are more hazardous than equivalent cumulative exposure received at higher rates for shorter periods of time. However, this effect is shown to diminish at lower exposure rates and cumulative exposures. In addition, use of the new smoking data indicates that the radon/smoking interaction is submultiplicative and may depend upon attained age.