Re: Studies of Chernobyl Clean-up Workers

[John Goldsmith <gjohn@bgumail.bgu.ac.il>]

Vladimir Vasiliev:
     Some useful approaches to the estimation of exposures in clean-up
workers have been published by Shantyr et al. from St. Petersburg and 
by our group using a much smaller number of immigrants to Israel.  In
addition, a cooperative study of such workers now living in Baltic
countries has been ongoing and some of the results are available from 
Prof. Timo Hakulinen of the Finnish Cancer Registry .  They will be cited
in the Monograph on Radiation and Health, to be published in December by 
Environmental Health Perspectives.  The references to the first two
studies are Shantyr et al. "Estimating Radiation Exposures of Chernobyl
Clean-up workers: Risk Group Identification" pp.45-50 vol 3 Int. J. Occup.
Environ. Health, and Goldsmith et al."Radiation Exposures of Chenobyl
Cleanup workers Immigrating to Israel." pp 51-59, op. cit.  The two
studies were one of the results of a WHO consultation on the topic.
In our exploratory studies, we were able to look at 137 Cs body burden and 
did not find it helpful .  Have you different findings ?
      John R. Goldsmith, M.D., M.P.H., Professor of Epidemiology
       gjohn@BGUMAIL.bgu.ac.il 


On Fri, 10 Oct 1997, Vladimir Vasiliev wrote:

> After the Chernobyl accident I took a part in radiation measurements 
> of environment and population in radioactivity contaminated regions
> of Russia (Tula and Bryansk regions). In particular, I tried to estimate
> doses
> of external exposure for a group of Chernobyl clean-up workers on the base
> of interview. It was not successful due to very high dose rate difference
> from 
> site to site, undetermined work time in various places, etc.
> In my opinion, monitoring of the population of contaminated territories
> allows
> to calculate the internal and external radiation doses more correctly. In
> Russia
> measurements of gamma dose rate and internal radioactivity were carried out
> in our Institute and the Institute of Radiation Hygiene (St.Petersburg).
> 
> Vladimir Vasiliev,
> Senior Researcher, 
> Dosimetry Research Lab, MRID&S, Moscow, Russia
> E-mail: vnvasil@orc.ru
> WWW homepage: www.orc.ru/~vnvasil
>