Specific causes of death in miners and ex-miners of the

The specific causes of death for miners and ex-miners of the Rhondda Fach have been examined in detail using the data base provided by the 30 year follow up. The main findings are the lower specific mortality for those with category A, compared with those with categories 0, 1,2, and 3, for all circulatory diseases (particularly ischaemic heart disease) and the raised mortality for gastric cancer. These results are surprising because a high proportion of those with, especially, categories 2 and 3 developed category A during the 30 years but fail to show the specific death rates typical of those with category A. Possible reasons for this are discussed and an explanation put forward. The specific causes of death of men in mining popu lations have been rather neglected, mainly because so many deaths are needed when they are broken down by occupation, age, and pneumoconiosis category to make sense of the results, and partly because of dis trust about the accuracy of such data. We agree about the inaccuracy but doubt whether it leads to bias in relation to category of pneumoconiosis with which we are chiefly concerned here. We therefore took the plunge. Material The material used is the results of the 30 year follow up of the men in the Rhondda Fach,1 which forms an excellent data base.