Proceedings of The British Institute of Radiology Radiation protection: sense or nonsense? 13 December 1989

We have obtained mortality data for 1415 Swedish iron miners who worked underground and were exposed to relatively low concentrations of radon daughters. The cohorts studied were men born between 1880 and 1919 who were alive on January 1st 1930. Control populations have been the Swedish national population and men from the nearby communities from the same birth years. Follow-up has now been completed up to 1986, at which time only 30% of the miners were still alive. Thus this study population is epidemiologically the most complete in the world of any group studied prospectively. Comparison of the two control populations shows that causes of death differed significantly for the local population compared to Swedish national rates. For example, a stomach cancer excess among miners is found to be present among local controls as well. Seventy-three deaths from lung cancer have been observed among miners compared with 17.6 expected from community data. The absolute excess lung cancer risk for cigarette smokers is 1.66 times that for non-smokers, but the relative risk coefficient for non-smokers is four times that for smokers. The excess relative risk for lung cancer has continued unchang