The study is based on a case-control study nested within a cohort study (11 000 miners and 1074 lung cancers). The controls were individually matched by year of birth and attained age. Smoking data were collected in person or from relatives of deceased subjects or from medical files. The study resulted in 850 cases of lung cancer with smoking data. The linear dependence of lung cancer relative risk (RR) on radon exposure adjusted for smoking was not substantially different from analyses when smoking was ignored and reflected mainly the risk among smokers. However, the excess RR per unit exposure among never smokers (70 cases) was substantially higher in comparison with that in smokers, reflecting differences in lung morphometry and clearance. The RRs from combined effects are substantially lower than the risk derived from the multiplicative model, but somewhat higher than those from the additive model. The work was supported by the Czech Ministry of Health (IGA NS 10596).

National Radiation Protection Institute Bartoskova 28 CZ 140 00 Prague Czech Republic

References provided by Crossref.org

A discussion on the potential impact of residential radon exposure on the quality of exposure and risk assessment for former uranium miners

PUMA - pooled uranium miners analysis: cohort profile

Low radon exposures and lung cancer risk: joint analysis of the Czech, French, and Beaverlodge cohorts of uranium miners

Lung cancer risk from occupational and environmental radon and role of smoking in two Czech nested case-control studies