Effect of Errors in Occupational Radiation Dose on Breast Cancer, Cataract and Chromosome Aberrations in a Cohort of US Radiologic Technologists

• Activity Number: 197 - Health Data Analytics
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Tuesday, August 4, 2020 : 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM
• Sponsor: Government Statistics Section
• Author(s): Mark Peter Little* and Ankur Patel and Steven L Simon and Cari M Kitahara and Nobuyuki Hamada and Paul S. Albert
• Companies: National Cancer Institute and National Cancer Institute and National Cancer Institute and National Cancer Institute and Central Research Institute of Electric Power Industry (CRIEPI) and National Cancer Institute
• Keywords: covariate measurement error; ; shared error; breast cancer; cataract; chromosome aberrations; ionizing radiation

Abstract

Breast cancer and cataract are some of the major morbidities in the US population, and are known to be associated with radiation exposure. Likewise, chromosome translocations are a well-recognized biological marker of radiation exposure and of cancer risk. Some recent studies, in particular of the US Radiologic Technologists, suggested that both cataract and chromosome aberrations may be induced by relatively low doses of chronically delivered ionizing radiation, and there are weak indications also of such trends for breast cancer. It is well known that dosimetric measurement error can alter substantially the shape of radiation dose-response relationship and hence the derived study risk estimates, and can also inflate the variance of the estimates; inflation of variance of risk estimates is particularly associated with shared errors. We shall analyze breast cancer, cataract and chromosome aberrations in the US Radiologic Technologists, using Bayesian and frequentist methods, with a particular view to assessing the impact of shared error on risk estimates. We shall also discuss the implications of this for other health endpoints, and other types of exposures.