[ RadSafe ] Nuclear power plants – unwise for pregnant women and children to live near them?

[Brad Keck]

Roger,

This is certainly not the "Nuclear News" of the American Nuclear Society!

it is interesting to note that in the German paper you reference below, it is only in 1990 and 1991 that an "excessive" number of cases was observed - 3 and 2, respectively.  In all the other years, there is either 0 or 1 case observed.  SInce it is medically impossible to observe 0.3 cases, in 13/15 years, the expected values are in fact observed.  While it is most misfortunate for any child to contract leukemia (statistically expected or not), this would seem to me to be such small numbers of observations that random chance can not be excluded, particularly in the absence of a plausible mechanism, which the authors concede.  

Perhaps Prof. Richardson in Chapel Hill will see this and comment?  

Bradly D. Keck, PhD, CHP  




On May 3, 2012, at 7:43 AM, Roger Helbig wrote:

> The latest from the nuclear news - they seem to have some actual
> researchers instead of the usual cast of characters like the bereted
> one, but I wonder if any of you know anything about these researchers
> and the quality of their research.  I believe the German study is
> highly suspect as is the on-line journal in which it is published.
> 
> Roger Helbig
> 
>> Nuclear power plants – unwise for pregnant women and children to live near them?
>> 
>> by Christina MacPherson
>> the new evidence of an association between increased cancers and proximity to nuclear facilities raises difficult questions. Should pregnant women and young children be advised to move away from them? Should local residents eat vegetables from their gardens? And, crucially, shouldn’t those governments around the world who are planning to build more reactors think again?
>> Reasonable Doubt, Environmental Research Foundation By Ian Fairlie Among the many environmental concerns surrounding nuclear power plants, there is one that provokes public anxiety like no other: the fear that children living near nuclear facilities face an increased risk of cancer. Though a link has long been suspected, it has never been proven. Now that seems likely to change.
>> 
>> Studies in the 1980s revealed increased incidences of childhood leukaemia near nuclear installations at Windscale (now Sellafield), Burghfield and Dounreay in the UK. Later studies near German nuclear facilities found a similar effect. The official response was that the radiation doses from the nearby plants were too low to explain the increased leukaemia. The Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment, which is responsible for advising the UK government, finally concluded that the explanation remained unknown but was not likely to be radiation.
>> 
>> There the issue rested, until a recent flurry of epidemiological studies appeared. Last year, researchers at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston carried out a meta-analysis of 17 research papers covering 136 nuclear sites in the UK, Canada, France, the US, Germany, Japan and Spain. The incidence of leukaemia in children under 9 living close to the sites showed an increase of 14 to 21 per cent, while death rates from the disease were raised by 5 to 24 per cent, depending on their proximity to the nuclear facilities (European Journal of Cancer Care, vol 16, p 355).
>> 
>> This was followed by a German study which found 14 cases of leukaemia compared to an expected four cases between 1990 and 2005 in children living within 5 kilometres of the Krummel nuclear plant near Hamburg, making it the largest leukaemia cluster near a nuclear power plant anywhere in the world (Environmental Health Perspectives, vol 115, p 941).
>> 
>> This was upstaged by the yet more surprising KiKK studies (a German acronym for Childhood Cancer in the Vicinity of Nuclear Power Plants),
> 
>> http://nuclear-news.net/2012/05/03/nuclear-power-plants-unwise-for-pregnant-women-and-children-to-live-near-them/
>> 
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