LUNG CANCER IN CHROMATE WORKERS

To the Editor:—  Since rapidly rising death rates for lung cancer in recent years have brought medical attention to sharp focus on this disease, great interest attaches to statements of Machle and Gregorius (Pub. Health Rep.63:114, 1948) that chromate workers exhibit rates ten to seventy times those normally to be expected. The recent editorial (The Journal, 138: 823, 1948) gave added importance to their statement. The rates they found among chromate workers are not strikingly different, however, from those prevailing generally among similar population segments of Chicago's industrial districts (where no chromate-producing plants are located).White men 50 to 69 years of age living in Chicago's Loop district have a lung cancer (No. 47 International List of Causes of Death) death rate of 16.0 per 10,000 man-years of exposure for the years 1944, 1945 and 1946 (based on 1940 population figures). This is above the average rate of