Current occupation was collected as an open-ended variable and coded using the 1980 US Bureau of the Census occu pational scaling system, which creates a hierarchy of occupations ordered on the basis of education and income.21 To ex- amine associations between separate oc- cupations and risk factors, we coded each occupation, including homemaker, as an indicator variable, with executives as the reference category. In multivariate mod els, we excluded homemakers and used occupation as a ranked variable ranging from executives to unskilled workers. Participants were considered cigarette smokers if they reported ever smoking on a daily basis and had smoked one or more cigarettes in the last week. Participants whose plasma thiocyanate exceeded 100 HmoVL and whose expired air carbon monoxide level exceeded 8 ppmwere classsified as smokers regardless of their selfreported responses.2 Total and HDL plasma cholesterol were derived from nonfasting venous samples, analyzed fresh by standard methods established by the Lipid Research Clinics Program.2 Three blood pressure measurements were taken on the