Abstract
<h3>To the Editor.—</h3> Radium ingestion is a recognized cause of bone and nasal cancers among radium-dial workers.<sup>1</sup>Recently, the 1981 leukemia incidence rates were reported to be elevated in central Florida counties where radium levels in some private water supplies exceed the Environmental Protection Agency's radiumlimit.<sup>2</sup>We have investigated site-specific cancer rates in these counties over a longer period. <h3>Study.—</h3> We used mortality data from the National Center for Health Statistics and population data from the 1980 Florida census to estimate mortality rates for all types of leukemia, acute myeloid leukemia (AML), and bone and nasal cancers for the five-year period from 1978 to 1982. Radium exposure was classified by county on the basis of radium levels in private wells, as per Lyman et al.<sup>2</sup>A weighted least-squares regression of county-specific age-, race-, and sex-adjusted mortality rates was also used to see if differences in
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More From: JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association
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