32 Archives of Environmental Health

DOLK ET AL.1 found that there was significant decline in skin and bladder cancer incidence among adults in England as distance from a frequency modula-tion (FM) broadcasting tower increased. In the second part of the study, these investigators reported a similar trend for individuals who lived various distances from FM and TV towers, but the effect was less pronounced than in the first study. In the current study, we sought to determine if the findings of Dolk et al.1 on a local scale generally held true for a country as a whole. If the findings held true, our second objective was to address possible improve-ments that could be initiated to reduce risk. We conducted the study in several steps. We initially addressed the survival probability of the general popu-lation to correctly account for natural deaths in the data analysis. We then analyzed independent sets of expo-sure and incidents data from 4 different countries to extract each individual exposure–time-specific inci-dence function (Etsi). Published sets of age-specific inci-dence data (ASI) were reviewed for different years. Finally, the numbers of radio stations that were locally receivable were correlated with the melanoma inci-dence for the 288 communities in Sweden. Method The hypothesis we tested was that the increase in melanoma incidence over the years could be explained entirely by the expansion of the FM broadcasting net-work. If true, we should be able to calculate the num-ber of cases each year on the basis of some publicly known facts: (1) the total exposure history of the popu-lation (i.e., number of individuals covered by the expanding FM broadcasting network each year); (2) the survival probability of the population (for the correct accounting of the number of exposed individuals remaining alive over time); and (3) age-specific inci-dence data, which we used to determine the probabili-ty of contracting melanoma vs. exposure time