Revision 1
March 19, 1998
by Radiation, Science, and Health, Inc.,
Edited by J. Muckerheide

1.2.3
Medical

1.2.3.1
Practitioners

"Statistical studies have been made of the life span of radiologists in the United Kingdom and the United States. It is intuitively believed that these persons, as a group, receive higher chronic exposures than any other group. Dublin and Spiegelman (1948), using an age-specific technique, found the mortality rate for radiologists to be only 90% of that for all physicians but somewhat greater than that for other medical specialists."

"A study of United States radiologists by Warren (1956) found the average age at death of radiologists was 60.5 years, while the average for all physicians was 65.7 years (1930 to 1954). This has been widely quoted as proving that chronic exposure to even low levels of radiation is a definite life-shortening agent. Within a couple of years. Seltzer and Sartwell (1958) analyzed Warren’s data and showed that the difference could be more than accounted for by correcting for age. The physicians’ average age-specific figure was 58.9 years, the radiologists’ was 60.5 years; they lived 2.5% longer than should have been anticipated. The greatest similar effect was shown by the pathologists with an average death age of 62.4, but with an age-specific figure of 58.6."

"Court-Brown and Doll (1958) using a standard cohort technique, analyzed the mortality of radiologists belonging to the 2 major radiological societies in the United Kingdom through 1956. Radiologists joining the radiological societies after 1920 would have had 176 deaths if they had the same life expectancy as the general population, or 169 deaths if their life expectancy was the same as that of physicians in general. Only 145 deaths were recorded."

"In a similar study, Seltzer and Sartwell (1959) made a comparison between radiologists and other groups. For the entire period, 1905 to 1944, 229 deaths of radiologists were observed as compared with the 211 which would be anticipated as based on the pathologists’ experience, 226 as based on the physicians’ experience, and 265 as based on the rate of the general population"