Note to users. If you're seeing this message, it means that your browser cannot find this page's style/presentation instructions -- or possibly that you are using a browser that does not support current Web standards. Find out more about why this message is appearing, and what you can do to make your experience of our site the best it can be.

Science 27 October 2006:
Vol. 314. no. 5799, p. 579
DOI: 10.1126/science.314.5799.579a
Prev | Table of Contents | Next

ScienceScope

A study of cancer death rates among U.S. computer-chip workers was published last week after IBM lost its legal battle to block the author from publishing it. Epidemiologist Richard Clapp of Boston University analyzed mortality data on 31,941 American IBM employees, many retired, who died between 1969 and 2001. He reported last week in Environmental Health that men and women in that group were 7% or 15% more likely, respectively, to have died from cancer than were those in an age- and sex-matched subset of the U.S. population. What's more, men who worked at one of four U.S. chip- and disk-drive manufacturing plants faced significantly higher risks of death from kidney and brain cancer, and, for women, breast cancer.

Clapp did the study after being hired as an expert witness for the former IBM workers who were suing the company (Science, 14 May 2004, p. 937). IBM's lawyers argued for almost 2 years that the study could be used only for litigation, but a New York district judge ruled in February that Clapp was free to publish it. "It feels great," Clapp says. IBM spokesperson Chris Andrews says that "Clapp's assertions are not backed by any credible science." Epidemiologist John Bailar, scholar-in-residence at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., says that "from what I know at present, there is an excess cancer risk."




To Advertise     Find Products

Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)