Abstract
Although radon gas is a known cause of lung cancer, the association between residential radon and mortality from non-malignant respiratory disease has not been well characterised.
The Cancer Prevention Study-II is a large prospective cohort study of nearly 1.2 million Americans recruited in 1982. Mean county-level residential radon concentrations were linked to study participants' residential address based on their ZIP code at enrolment (mean±sd 53.5±38.0 Bq·m−3). Cox proportional hazards regression models were used to estimate adjusted hazard ratios (HR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) for non-malignant respiratory disease mortality associated with radon concentrations. After necessary exclusions, a total of 811,961 participants in 2,754 counties were included in the analysis.
Throughout 2006, there were a total of 28,300 non-malignant respiratory disease deaths. Radon was significantly associated with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) mortality (HR per 100 Bq·m−3 1.13, 95% CI 1.05–1.21). There was a significant positive linear trend in COPD mortality with increasing categories of radon concentrations (p<0.05).
Findings suggest residential radon may increase COPD mortality. Further research is needed to confirm this finding and to better understand possible complex inter-relationships between radon, COPD and lung cancer.
Footnotes
Support Statement
M.C Turner was supported by a Canada Graduate Scholarship from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. D. Krewski is the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council Chair in Risk Science at the University of Ottawa (Ottawa, ON, Canada).
Statement of Interest
None declared.
This article was modified in April 2016 to correct errors in the licence information.
- Received April 4, 2011.
- Accepted August 26, 2011.
- Copyright © ERS 2012
ERJ Open articles are open access and distributed under the terms of the (Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Licence 3.0)