ML20128H323
| ML20128H323 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 06/14/1996 |
| From: | Levin A NRC |
| To: | NRC |
| Shared Package | |
| ML20128H116 | List: |
| References | |
| ACRS-GENERAL, NACNUCLE, NUDOCS 9610090307 | |
| Download: ML20128H323 (1) | |
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W From: Alan Levin To: TWD1.TWP2.NFD l Date: 6/14/9611:10am
Subject:
ACRS Presentation by Pollycove Noel:
Don't know if you noticed, but I sat in for part of the ACRS meeting this morning, partly out of personal interest, partly because I had invited my wife to attend. She is an epidemiologist at DOE, loolung at, among other things, health effects of radiation on large populations of DOE workers. She also got her doctorate at Johns Hopkins, and is friends with the Hopkins professor who authored the shipyard workers study that Pollycove was quoting so liberelly, if the ACRS is not already aware of this, apparently that professor has written to Pollycove to tell I
him to stop using her study to support his arguments in favor of hormesis, because he is misquoting the study and misinterpreting her data. As a specific example, Pollycove said in his presentation that the data for the non-nuclear workers show that there is no " healthy worker effect." According to my wife, the available data in general show that, in fact, the " healthy worker effect" is not relevant to cancer (so that the data show exactly what would be expected); rather, the healthy worker effect is related to other types of diseases / conditions that are affected by activity, lifestyle, etc., such as heart disease, high blood pressure / stroke, etc.
Also, Pollycove's assertion that the Hopkins study considered confounding effects such as smoking is apparently incorrect.
All in all, the Committee would be well advised to take the presentation with several grains of salt, if they're not already disposed to do so. l I
AEL '
l 9610090307 960614 PDR ACRS GENERAL PDR
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