[ RadSafe ] " Nuclear stations 'do not cause child cancer': Independent scien tists rule out link with disease clusters "

[Franta, Jaroslav]

FYI.....

Jaro 
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Nuclear stations 'do not cause child cancer': Independent scientists rule
out link with disease clusters
The Guardian (UK)
10 June 2005
Sarah Boseley Health editor 

Nuclear power stations were yesterday cleared of any responsibility for
childhood cancers in Britain by a high-level team of independent scientists.


The verdict from the Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the
Environment (Comare) is unequivocal. It looked at an area within a 25- mile
radius of all the main nuclear power stations and found there were no more
cancer cases than would have been expected. 

The committee looked at 21 sites, which included 13 power stations and 15
other nuclear installations. They found, as they have done in earlier
reports, that there were clusters of excess leukaemias and non-Hodgkin's
lymphomas near the reprocessing plants of Sellafield and Dounreay and the
atomic weapons establishment of Burghfield. There were also slightly more
other sorts of childhood cancers around Aldermaston, Burghfield and Harwell.


But Bryn Bridges, chairman of Comare, said the reasons for the increases
were not clear. At Dounreay, the numbers rose around 1980, but have not been
exceptional since. He said the "blip" coincided with the birth of the North
Sea oil industry, in nearby Thurso. One scientific theory is that the
population mixing caused by the arrival of a migrant workforce into a
previously remote and isolated community can lead to the transfer of new
viruses which may play a part in cancer. A similar process could have taken
place in Sellafield in Cumbria, he said. 

Professor Bridges said the report should mark the end of a long controversy,
but was not confident the impassioned arguments would end. 

"As far as childhood cancer and nuclear power stations is concerned, I'm
quite sure Comare would feel we have done a definitive report on it," he
said. "Whether those from the anti-nuclear lobbies will think that, I don't
know." 

Although the report comes at a time when the government is thinking of
increasing Britain's use of nuclear power, Prof Bridges denied the report
could be considered a political fix. 

"We started our study in 1993. It has taken a long time. There has been no
pressure from anybody to publish it now or not publish it last year or the
year before," he said. 

Only one finding was surprising, he said. At Rosyth in Scotland, where
nuclear submarines are stationed, there were no extra childhood cancers, but
those that were identified were not distributed evenly - they tended to
occur closer to the base. Prof Bridges said this merited further
investigation, although an earlier study had found an even spread. 

Comare was set up in 1985 after the Black report in 1984 into the high
numbers of leukaemia cases among young people living near Sellafield. In its
early years, said Prof Bridges, it had to fight for accurate data from the
nuclear industry on discharges from power stations. "I'm not saying anybody
covered anything up - they just didn't tell us," he said. The committee
uncovered details about discharges that nobody had known about. 

The worst discharges were from Sellafield in the 1960s and 1970s, which at
one point were 200,000 times greater than Aldeburgh and Burghfield combined,
he said. 

Comare has carried out a study of the geographical spread of childhood
cancers for its next report. It finds that 95% of cancers are randomly
spread, but that there are clusters. Past studies have shown an increased
rate in south Oxfordshire and Berkshire, but Prof Bridges said the increases
were not limited to the vicinity of Aldermaston, Harwell and Burghfield. 

He was unimpressed by some of the research adopted by campaigners to make
the case against nuclear power. "They can't do their sums and their data
sets are defective," he said. "Most of the measurements are based on tiny
numbers." He was equally unimpressed by lobby groups who "take data only
when it supports their case and they manipulate that data one way or another
to support their case".
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