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Number 5 is due to the elevation + weather (sunny-ness) and not the "stuff" at the labs.
You'll probably find similar numbers for locations located at similar elevations. Santa Fe is likely to have higher numbers than Albuquerque for this reason. Albuquerque more than Las Cruces and so on down to Phoenix.
Then, likewise, cities with similar elevations to Phoenix, but that are located "back East" have less rates of #5 due to less frequent sunny days.
As for the cancer rates, note that these are historical by their very nature. They study people who have lived in Los Alamos for decades. It is not necessarily a predictor of cancer rates for those just now moving there.
Awareness and techniques to control exposure get better every year.
That being said, your risks are bound to be higher in Los Alamos than in some other location. However, for statistics like these:
> 1. Brain and nervous system cancer 70%- 80% greater
> 2. Thyroid cancer nearly four-fold higher ...
What are your chances of getting nervous system cancer? I don't know, but say it is 1-in-50,000.
You " ... work with statistics ... " so wouldn't you say that your odds now become slightly less than 1-in-25,000?
All that "higher" and "greater" stuff wouldn't keep me from a job there.
It all depends on how you personally choose to look at stuff like that.
1. Brain and nervous system cancer 70%- 80% greater
2. Thyroid cancer nearly four-fold higher
3. Breast cancer 10%-65% higher
4. Ovarian cancer roughly two-fold higher
5. Melanoma two-fold greater
7. Non- Hodgkin's lymphoma 20%-60% greater
----------------------
This is not my field, so I comment with some hesitation. But
1. it seems like you have picked up the negatives, but not the positives.
For instance, a positive, "The incidence of leukemia was comparable to or lower than that observed in a New Mexico state and national reference population."
2. some of these have explanations:
Los Alamos is high --so melanoma is perhaps expected. Wear a hat and sun screen, I wouldn't think you have a problem.
Breast cancer is I believe higher among better educated women. That is what you have at Los Alamos, but the comparison groups do not seem to be comparable in education.
3. you have a very mobile population up there -- so people who get cancers may have lived most of their lives somewhere else.
4. It is a town -- you are going to have a small N. Thus you are going to expect that some types of cancer are going to be higher than average and some lower than average just from chance variation.
So I don't think I'd let it dissuade me. But I am no expert
Last edited by Poncho_NM; 07-17-2010 at 11:22 AM..
Reason: Fixed Quote
I can't comment on the statistics. All I can say is that I had a very good friend who spent his working career at Los Alamos--building "gadgets" for over three decades. He died in his early 70's of lung cancer. He never smoked, and had no significant family history of cancer. I had another acquaintance who spent his career building "gadgets" at Rocky Flats in Colorado. He died in his late 50's--never smoked and didn't have a family history of cancer, either. Of course, both worked those jobs in an era when not as much was known about radioactivity hazards, etc. as is known now. Draw your own conclusions.
unfortunately i can't read the study at this time as the link as posted pops up as a bad link when i try to follow it.
that said, i obviously have no way to verify the assertion that follows, so if anyone has solid information regarding the claim, your reply is welcome. the assertion i've heard is based on statements of a friend of mine whose mother died of a glioblastoma, a form of brain cancer, in los alamos. my friend was much interested in this study, but in the course of researching it discovered what she believed were errors in the methodology regarding the numbers they came up with for brain cancer. specifically: there are a handful of cancers, glioblastoma multiforme being an example, that are considered primary cancers of the brain, and then there are cancers such as lymphomas that can migrate to sites across the body, including the brain. according to my friend--and again, i've been unable to independantly verify this up to this point, but i believe it's an issue worth raising--the researchers included cancers that migrated into the brain in the "brain cancer" grouping though they can't be considered primary brain cancers, basically inflating the brain cancer numbers to whatever degree they included the migrating cancers. certainly it bears study to see if there's an increased likelihood of cancer migration to the brain, but it needs to be couched in those terms; otherwise, it's an unfortunate misrepresentation of the numbers.
i should also mention that i was recently diagnosed with a glioblastoma multiforme that was surgically debulked and am now undergoing treatment. i'm 41 y.o., and recovering well to date. i lived in los alamos from my early teens through high school graduation, so having lived a significant time of my life in los alamos i can certainly be counted among those who lived in los alamos who have had brain cancer. i have asked my doctors and pathologist if there's any way to attribute my tumor to a specific cause including living in los alamos, and they've all said there's currently no scientific way to identify a specific cause with certainty, so be careful with inferences. cancer and it's causes don't necessarily bend to making "logical" conclusions, although it's certainly valid to raise questions with the hope of finding answers that can be verified.
i'll also say, having lived in los alamos, that it's a beautiful town in an amazing landscape, and while the study seems to infer some scary numbers that may or may not be related to living there, anecdotally i know many people among my peers, their parents, and their children, who don't fall within the scope of the study considering their good health. perhaps that will change, but by and large i don't think so.
A Text version is here: Los Alamos Cancer Rate Study: Phase I (http://google.unm.edu/search?q=cache:Op8xmqMOnb8J:hsc.unm.edu/som/nmtr/LAC%2520Cancer%2520Rate%2520Study--Phase%25201.pdf+lac+cancer+rate+study&site=UNM&cli ent=UNM&proxystylesheet=UNM&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=U TF-8&access=p&oe=UTF-8 - broken link)
Quote:
Los Alamos Cancer Rate Study: Phase I
Cancer Incidence in Los Alamos County, 1970-1990
Final Report
Prepared by
William F. Athas, PhD
Division of Epidemiology, Evaluation, and Planning
New Mexico Department of Health
and
Charles R. Key, MD, PhD
New Mexico Tumor Registry
University of New Mexico Cancer Center
March 1993
The Alamogordo Daily News is also running a series of articles on the higher-than-average rates of cancer for Otero and Lincoln counties (Trinity Site), but it's not online.
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