The L-myc and p53 genes have been implicated in lung cancer. Both of these genes have restriction fragment length polymorphisms (RFLPs) that could account for differential expression or activity of variant forms. An EcoRI restriction site in the L-myc gene was previously reported to be a predictor of poor prognosis in Japanese lung cancer patients. There are several RFLPs in the p53 gene. In exon 4 there is a polymorphism that codes for either an arginine or proline residue at codon 72. We previously reported the frequency of DNA-RFLPs at these gene loci revealed by EcoRI and AccII respectively. Here we report results from a study comparing lung cancer cases (n = 31) with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease controls (n = 49). No association was found between these RFLPs and disease status. Previous observations that the frequencies of these RFLPs varied by race were confirmed. The p53 arginine allele was found to be more common in Caucasians (0.71) than African-Americans (0.50). The EcoRI restriction site present allele in L-myc was more frequent in African-Americans (0.71) than Caucasians (0.49). Thus, the allelic frequency for L-myc was similar in African-Americans to that reported for Japanese, and the allelic frequency for p53 was similar in Caucasians to that reported for Japanese.