How do the risks for brain cancer found in the study compare with the risk in the general population?
For both groups of veterans, the risk of dying during the period 1991-2000 was 60 percent lower than the risk of death among members of the general U.S. population of the same age, gender, and race. A total of 12,000 people die from brain cancer in the U.S. each year, which is a rate of 4.7 per hundred thousand people per year. Compared to a similar segment of the U.S. population, veterans in the hazard area had a higher proportion of deaths due to brain cancer than veterans outside the hazard area.
