Daily symptom rates in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and in other subjects with presumed high sensitivity to air pollution who lived near a coal-fired plant were compared with 24-hr ambient air concentrations of nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, soot, and suspended particles as well as with emissions from the plant. The mean concentrations of each of the pollutants during the 4-month study period were below 30 micrograms/m3, and no single 24-hr concentration exceeded 100 micrograms/m3. There were no consistent associations between plant emissions and pollutant levels or between these two variables and daily symptom rates. The results indicate that the coal-fired plant was not of major importance for the occurrence of acute respiratory symptoms in the surrounding population.

Acute Disease↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Renal cancer and cigarette smoking in a 26-year followup of U.S. veterans.

The cigarette smoking habits of a cohort of almost 250,000 U. S. veterans were analyzed for their relationship to renal cancer. Information on smoking habits was collected in 1954 and in 1957 for nonrespondents to the first effort. Of the veterans, 84 percent returned their questionnaires. The cohort was followed for mortality until 1980, or 26 years. The followup of these military veterans, mostly of World War I, revealed 719 deaths from renal cancer, making this the largest study of renal cancer and cigarette smoking to date. Current smokers had a 47 percent increase in risk relative to nonsmokers. The relative risk for renal cancer increased significantly with the number of cigarettes smoked per day, from 1.31 for 1-9, 1.37 for 10-20, 1.60 for 21-39, and 2.06 for 40 or more. This analysis was unable to separate the risks of cigarette smoking for tumors of the renal parenchyma from those for tumors of the renal pelvis and ureter. However, the results suggest that almost one-fifth of all renal cancer deaths are attributable to cigarette smoking.

Causality↗