~14-
UCRL-3644
tendency, and the effect is about the same at any adult age.
The list of relative
displacements of physiologic age (Table I) is given for factors that accentuate
aging or loss of life span (expressed as minus time) or retard aging (expressed
as plus time). These measures are derived directly from human records.
They are grouped according to whether they appear to be reversible or per-
manent.
Most of the effects that are not partial measures of the same state
are apparently additive, in the few instances that can be tested for this property.
Certain of these circumstances that modify health are partially
interrelated, others may be independent of one another.
Estimates of effect
upon physiologic age may be additive, depending upon the extent to which they
are independent. Thus country vs city dwelling may be suspected to include
the factor estimated as exercise benefit. The lipoprotein test already contains information that can be estimated partially by relative overweightness,
and the lipoprotein test already accounts for a portion of the smoking effect.
Familial inheritance is independently estimated from each ancestor; male vs
female differences are equally added to city vs country effects, and presumably
each separate disease sign in the impairment study is additive.
In further support of the additive nature of effects upon health,
each
morbidity circumstance that can be quantitively estimated produces an effect
proportional to the intensity of the circumstance. Examples of proportional
change in mortality riskwith
morbidity severity are:
5
_——
(a)
Overweight
-0.17 year for each percent overweight
(b)
Smoking
-0,45 year per cigarette used per day-
(c)
Radiation
~5 to -10 days per r of whole body radiation
3 cells killed per 1000 cells per r (marrow and lymphatic
tissue)
4 cells with chromosome breaks per 10,000 cells perr
1.4% increase in leukemia per r
(d)
(e)
.
.
i
)
wk
-
Atherosclerosis
Diabetes
end effects are proportional to severity of metabolic
Nephritis
error
Accidents are proportional to exposure risks
A somewhat similar tabulation can be made of an estimation of the
cost of industrial and transporation progress in this century in terms of years
of life span lost by accidental death, distributed to the average individual in
the population of the United States (Table II). These values are approximately
comparable to the preceding values based upon changes in physiologic age.
In about the same way, we can tabulate the effects on life span of
radiation received. (Table III. )
J