ABSTRACT
I. INTRODUCTION
Identifying a mortality excess for all cancers or a site-specific cancer in an industrial population is the focus of this chapter. Any approach must account for demographic variables, such as age, sex, and race of the members of the workforce, since the mortality burden of a population typically varies with these characteristics. Other exposure variables, most notably smoking, are also of interest as they may contribute to the occurrence of some causes of death. For example, smoking has been thought to be associated with 80% of all lung cancer deaths. The attention of this chapter will be concentrated on statistical methods historically employed for these purposes. However, some epidemiologic perspectives on these approaches cannot be separated. These issues will be considered as they arise.
