Chernobyl Study Reveals First Direct Evidence

["Sandy Perle" <sandyfl@EARTHLINK.NET>]

Index:



Chernobyl Study Reveals First Direct Evidence

Belgium may review nuclear energy exit-minister

Full Body Scans Raise Cancer Risk, U.S. Study Shows

China, US near end to nuclear tech dispute - WSJ

---------------------------------------------------------------



Chernobyl Study Reveals First Direct Evidence That Risk of Thyroid 

Cancer Rises With Increasing Radiation Dose



SEATTLE, Sept. 1 /PRNewswire/ -- The risk of thyroid cancer rises 

with increasing radiation dose, according to the most thorough risk 

analysis for thyroid cancer to date among people who grew up in the 

shadow of the 1986 Chernobyl power-plant disaster.



The incidence of thyroid cancer was 45 times greater among those who 

received the highest radiation dose as compared to those in the 

lowest-dose group, according to a team of American and Russian 

researchers led by Scott Davis, Ph.D., and colleagues at Fred 

Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. They report their findings in the 

September issue of Radiation Research.



"This is the first study of its kind to establish a dose-response 

relationship between radiation dose from Chernobyl and thyroid 

cancer," said Davis, referring to the observation that as radiation 

doses increase, so does the risk of thyroid cancer. "We found a 

significant increased risk of thyroid cancer among people exposed as 

children to radiation from Chernobyl, and that the risk increased as 

a function of radiation dose."



Having such information in hand, Davis said, may help officials 

better predict what long-term health effects to expect in the event 

of a similar nuclear accident or terrorist attack.



"Another potential benefit of the findings is that it allows 

officials to more accurately understand and document the magnitude of 

the thyroid-cancer burden that has resulted from Chernobyl. This 

information will be important in designing and maintaining programs 

targeted toward the victims of the disaster."



While about 30 people were killed immediately from the blast, which 

remains the worst accident of its kind in history, an estimated 5 

million people were exposed to the resulting radiation.



"Prior to Chernobyl, thyroid cancer in children was practically 

nonexistent. Today we see dozens and dozens of cases a year in the 

regions contaminated by the disaster, and the incidence continues to 

rise," Davis said. "This provides some evidence that there's an 

excess of thyroid cancer in children and in people who were children 

at the time of the accident. However until now nobody had taken the 

next step to find out just how much a risk there is and whether it 

rises along with radiation dose."



While previous Chernobyl studies have relied on broad-stroke 

estimates of radiation exposure based on such factors as ground 

contamination, geographic proximity to the northern Ukraine plant or 

other surrogate measures of exposure, this study is the first of its 

kind to factor into the equation individualized estimates of 

radiation dose based on in-person interviews about diet and other 

lifestyle factors, said Davis, a member of Fred Hutchinson's Public 

Health Sciences Division.



"After all these years, many efforts have been made by various 

research groups around the world to study the health effects of 

Chernobyl, and hundreds of scientific papers have been published. But 

ours is the first report that provides quantitative estimates of 

thyroid-cancer risk in relation to individual estimates of radiation 

dose," said Davis, also chairman of the Department of Epidemiology at 

the University of Washington School of Public Health and Community 

Medicine in Seattle.



Kenneth Kopecky, Ph.D., a biostatistician in Fred Hutchinson's Public 

Health Sciences Division, was the study's co-investigator and 

directed the data analysis. Public Health Sciences Division staff 

managed and coordinated all aspects of the project. They included 

Theresa Taggart (project manager), Lynn Onstad (statistician), Teri 

Kopp (administration) and Laurie Shields (research coordinator).



The Fred Hutchinson team organized a collaborative effort with a 

dozen scientists at four Russian institutions to conduct this 

research: the Medical Radiological Research Center (in Obninsk), the 

Byransk Diagnostic Center and the Bryansk Institute of Pathology 

(both in Bryansk), and the National Center of Hematology (in Moscow). 

All investigators were members of the International Consortium for 

Research on the Health Effects of Radiation funded by the U.S. Office 

of Naval Research.



The researchers focused their efforts on western part of the Bryansk 

Oblast of Russia. This region, located about 66 miles northeast of 

Chernobyl, is the most heavily contaminated area in the Russian 

Federation. This was the first study of this type among residents of 

the Russian Federation exposed to Chernobyl radiation.



Working through a local cancer registry, the researchers identified 

26 people with thyroid cancer who were less than 20 years old when 

the Chernobyl accident occurred; the majority were under 16 when 

their thyroid cancers were diagnosed. They then identified 52 healthy 

control subjects from the general population for comparison purposes. 

The controls and cancer cases were matched by age and place of 

residence at the time of the accident.



The researchers then set about collecting information from these 

individuals and their mothers or fathers that would allow them to 

estimate each person's radiation dose using computer models. 

Interviews took place in the home and were conducted by Russian 

physicians.



Individual doses depended largely on the ingestion patterns of food 

contaminated with radioactive iodine-131 (I-131), which concentrates 

in the thyroid gland. The primary source of food-based I-131 was milk 

from cows that grazed on contaminated pastures. Radiation doses to 

the thyroid increased along with the amount of milk and dairy 

products consumed. External, airborne radiation and contamination of 

other foods also contributed somewhat to the overall dose, depending 

on the person's proximity to the plant at the time of the accident. 

These doses were all received within the first few months after the 

accident, before the I-131 in the environment decayed into non-

radioactive elements. While other radioactive contaminants remain in 

the area, they do not cause appreciable doses of radiation to the 

thyroid.



In addition to the study's ability to estimate individual radiation 

doses based on personal interviews, other strengths of the study 

included the fact that all cases of thyroid cancer were confirmed 

independently by a panel of expert pathologists, and the study 

focused on people exposed as young children and adolescents, a group 

that is likely to be most susceptible to the effects of radiation 

exposure to the thyroid gland. Limitations of the study included its 

small sample size and its reliance on individual recall for reporting 

factors such as milk-consumption patterns that were used to estimate 

radiation dose.



Efforts are under way to investigate a larger population in a similar 

fashion to see if these findings can be replicated, Davis said.



For his contributions to the field, earlier this year Davis became 

the first foreign epidemiologist elected to the Russian Academy of 

Medical Sciences. The group's status in that country is on a par with 

the esteemed National Academy of Sciences in the United States. In 

May he received an honorary diploma in Moscow.



Davis and colleagues have extended their cancer-risk studies to older 

Chernobyl survivors and are investigating how the damage caused to 

DNA by radiation influences the risk of developing thyroid cancer.



This work is part of Fred Hutchinson's Global Health Initiative, 

which focuses on international collaboration to understand and solve 

some of the most widespread health problems in the world, including 

cancer and infectious diseases.



Providing some long-awaited answers to Chernobyl survivors has been a 

rewarding research endeavor for Scott Davis, Ph.D., and colleagues at 

Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, but it hasn't been a 

straightforward one.



Some of the team's greatest achievements were simply establishing the 

working relationships and infrastructure to get the studies off the 

ground.



"Within the first year of the 1986 accident, we were very interested 

in seeing if we could get involved and participate in long-term 

studies of health effects," Davis said. "But at the time of the 

accident, our government and that of the former Soviet Union were not 

so friendly, so establishing connections through that route didn't 

work."



But in 1990, an opportunity surfaced when a Russian helicopter pilot 

involved in the initial efforts to contain the Chernobyl radiation 

developed leukemia and came to Fred Hutchinson for a bone-marrow 

transplant. After his treatment, an informal exchange program began 

between Fred Hutchinson and the National Center for Hematology in 

Moscow, whose director approached the center for assistance in 

developing a research and treatment institute for victims of the 

accident. Davis and colleague Kenneth Kopecky, Ph.D., made their 

first trip to Moscow that year.



Then, in 1992, the Soviet Union collapsed. "We were back to square 

one in terms of negotiations," Davis said.



But, thanks to efforts by Fred Hutchinson's then-president and 

director, Robert W. Day, M.D., and by the late Adm. Elmo Zumwalt, a 

former center trustee and former chief of naval operations for the 

U.S. Navy, new relationships were established. In 1992, a research 

consortium consisting of three international teams working in Russia, 

Belarus and Ukraine was created to study long-term health effects of 

the radiation released at Chernobyl.



"Our initial work in Russia was simply to conduct small pilot studies 

to establish in concrete terms whether we could carry out all phases 

of an epidemiological study," Davis said. "There was no history of 

doing this kind of research in Russia or the other two countries. We 

had to set it all up from scratch."



Challenges included purchasing Russian vehicles for the field teams 

using federal dollars -- an unprecedented bureaucratic challenge for 

the researchers -- importing all laboratory equipment and supplies, 

and then figuring out a way to maintain them without the standard 

resources that one takes for granted in the United States.



"It's been a long haul and an enormous amount of time and work," 

Davis said, whose 30-plus trips to the former Soviet Union include 

walking the grounds of the evacuated plant and surveying the 

desolated 30-kilometer evacuation zone.



Once the team established the capability to do the research, the 

group began its studies of thyroid cancer, a disease linked to 

radiation exposure. By the early 1990s, many new cases of the 

disease, particularly among young children, were diagnosed in regions 

near the blast. Since then, reports show several hundred cases of 

thyroid cancer in young children in the three countries contaminated 

by Chernobyl, a trend that appears to be continuing.



Despite the lack of resources available to initiate these studies, 

Davis said that scientists and citizens of the three countries were 

eager for the research from the start. "Our collaborators in Russia 

have been terrific colleagues," he said. "We now have very close ties 

with our partner institutions."



He also credited the strong encouragement and support from Fred 

Hutchinson's senior administration for helping him establish stable 

working relationships with their overseas colleagues.



"The incredible support and flexibility of the center, especially in 

the early stages, really made this happen. That can't be overstated," 

Davis said.

------------------



Belgium may review nuclear energy exit-minister



BRUSSELS, Sept 2 (Reuters) - Belgium could review an earlier decision 

to phase out nuclear energy, the country's economics minister said on 

Thursday.



"Reviewing the previous government's decision to quit nuclear energy 

by 2015 should not be a taboo," Economics Minister Marc Verwilghen 

said in an interview with Belgian dailies De Standaard and Le Soir.



He said he had ordered a study into the long-term energy needs of 

Belgium.



"For Belgium, the decision to quit nuclear energy was an ideological 

choice. There is a bit of hypocrisy in that -- if we have to use 

energy supplied by our neighbours, that may include nuclear energy," 

Verwilghen said.



An earlier coalition led by Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt included 

the anti-nuclear Greens, who were dropped from Verhofstadt's new 

coalition of Liberals and Socialists in July 2003.



Verwilghen also said he wanted to speed up the liberalisation of the 

Belgian electricity and gas markets, by easing access to foreign 

utilities.



"Pushing forward authentic liberalisation means that we ... have to 

offer a real opportunity to other major players from neighbouring 

countries, who possess the same experience and knowledge," Verwilghen 

said.



He added that Belgium wanted to strengthen energy links with its 

neighbouring countries.



Verwilghen said he wanted at least three players to operate in the 

Belgian market. He plans to make the Belgian competition regulation 

more effective and in the short run open up more production capacity 

to other producers than incumbent operator Electrabel.



"In the short term, we do not expect a significant impact on 

Electrabel," KBC Securities said in a research note.



"The pricing environment is not yet favourable to new investments in 

production capacity and building new interconnection power lines 

takes time," KBC added.

-------------------



Full Body Scans Raise Cancer Risk, U.S. Study Shows



WASHINGTON (Aug. 31) - People who pay for whole-body X-ray scans in 

the hope of finding tumors at their earliest stages may, ironically, 

be raising their overall risk of cancer, doctors warned on Tuesday.



The scans are marketed as a way to catch cancer before symptoms 

begin, but the radiation from the scans themselves could cause 

cancer, the researchers said.



CT or computed tomography scans involve X-rays, but computer software 

and multiple angles produce a higher-quality image than the 

traditional flat X-ray.



The scans are not the same as magnetic resonance imaging or MRI 

scans, which do not expose the body to radiation.



Writing in the September issue of the journal Radiology, radiation 

oncologist David Brenner and colleagues at Columbia University in New 

York said whole-body CT scans pack a considerable radiation wallop.



"The radiation dose from a full-body CT scan is comparable to the 

doses received by some of the atomic-bomb survivors from Hiroshima 

and Nagasaki, where there is clear evidence of increased cancer 

risk," Brenner said in a statement.



They studied survivors who got low doses of radiation from the bombs, 

not those who got the highest doses.



The dose from a single full-body CT is only slightly lower than the 

mean dose experienced by some atomic bomb survivors, they said, and 

is nearly 100 times that of a typical screening mammogram.



A 45-year-old person who gets one full-body CT screening would have 

an estimated lifetime cancer death risk of approximately 0.08 

percent, which would produce cancer in one in 1,200 people, they 

estimated.



However, a 45-year-old who has annual full-body CT scans for 30 years 

would accrue an estimated lifetime cancer mortality risk of about 1.9 

percent or almost one in 50.



The risk may be worth it for someone who knows he or she has a high 

probability of cancer, such as those with inherited genetic mutations 

or a family history of the disease, Brenner said.



Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the United States 

after heart disease and is expected to kill 550,000 people this year.

------------------



China, US near end to nuclear tech dispute - WSJ



NEW YORK (Reuters) - China and the United States are close to 

resolving a long dispute over the transfer of nuclear technology, 

paving the way for U.S. companies to sell nuclear reactors to China 

in transactions that may be worth billions of dollars, the Wall 

Street Journal said Thursday.



"This is happening," an unidentified U.S. State Department official 

told the newspaper. Sanctions, export controls and most other 

barriers to sale have been removed, he said.



If all goes smoothly, Pittsburgh's Westinghouse Electric Co. expects 

to receive U.S. government permission to begin bidding in late 2004 

or early 2005 to provide reactors for one or two Chinese nuclear 

power plants, with reactors selling for about $2.2 billion a pair, 

company spokesman Vaughn Gilbert told the newspaper.



China has embarked on an ambitious plan to add two to three nuclear 

power plants a year for roughly the next 15 years, so that nuclear 

power will account for about 4 percent of the country's power mix by 

2020, said Zhang Huazhu, chairman of the China Atomic Energy 

Authority, on Wednesday.



China had drafted preliminary plans roughly quadruple its nuclear 

power capacity to by 2020, Zhang said.



According to the newspaper, U.S. entry into China's nuclear market 

would end a long-running irritant in the countries' trade relations, 

which have ebbed and flowed with overall ties.



Former U.S. President Bill Clinton had revived a 1985 agreement to 

allow cooperation on nuclear energy. However, Washington still did 

not approve commercial contracts with Beijing, due to additional 

export controls and concerns about prior Chinese proliferation of 

nuclear technology to Iran and Pakistan, the newspaper said.



Gilbert, the Westinghouse spokesman, said his company plans to bid on 

a nuclear power plant in Sanmen in eastern China and a plant in 

Yangjiang in the south, the latter of which has not been approved, 

the newspaper said.



France's Areva (CEPFi.PA) and Atomic Energy Canada Ltd. are also 

interested in the plants, the newspaper said.



------------------------------------ 

Sandy Perle 

Senior Vice President, Technical Operations 

Global Dosimetry Solutions, Inc. 

2652 McGaw Avenue 

Irvine, CA 92614 



Direct Line: (949) 296-2306

Local:  (949) 419-1000 Extension 2306

Toll Free: (888) 437-1714  Extension 2306

Fax: (949) 296-1144



E-Mail: sperle@dosimetry.com 

E-Mail: sandyfl@earthlink.net 



Global Dosimetry Website: http://www.dosimetry.com/ 

Personal Website: http://sandy-travels.com/ 



************************************************************************

You are currently subscribed to the Radsafe mailing list. To

unsubscribe, send an e-mail to Majordomo@list.vanderbilt.edu  Put the

text "unsubscribe radsafe" (no quote marks) in the body of the e-mail,

with no subject line. You can view the Radsafe archives at

http://www.vanderbilt.edu/radsafe/