Lung cancer risk of low-level exposures to alpha emitters: critical reappraisal and experiments based on a new cytodynamic model
Ecologic U.S. county data suggest negative associations between residential radon exposure and lung cancer mortality (LCM)-inconsistent with clearly positive associations revealed by occupational data on individual miners, but perhaps explained by competing effects of cell killing vs. mutations in alpha-exposed bronchial epithelium. To assess the latter possibility, a biologically based "cytodynamic 2-stage" (CD2) cancer-risk model was fit to combined 1950-54 age- specific person-year data on lung cancer mortality (LCM) in white females of age 40+ y in 2,821 U.S. counties (-90% never-smokers), and in 5 cohorts of underground miners who never smoked. New estimates of household annual average radon exposuremore »