A comparison between the risks of childhood leukaemia from parental exposure to radiation in the Sellafield workforce and those displayed among the Japanese bomb survivors

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
The cases of childhood leukaemia found near the Sellafield plant and those observed in the offspring of the Japanese bomb survivors are analysed using a relative risk model. The leukaemia relative risk coefficients for total paternal (whole-body) pre-conception exposure for the Sellafield children are found to be about 50 to 80 times higher than the (gonadal) coefficients applying to the offspring of the bomb survivors. This difference is statistically significant, and in particular the risk coefficients for the Sellafield cohort are significantly positive, unlike those for the Japanese. If the assumption is made that the excess relative risk estimated from the Sellafield data lasts for the whole of the life of the offspring, the apparent population leukaemia risk to the first-generation offspring (for an England and Wales population) would be between 4% Sv-1 and 5% Sv-1. On the more likely assumption that the relative risk falls off in the same way as has been observed for leukaemias in children directly exposed to radiation, the risk would then be reduced to about 0.5%-1.5% Sv-1. Such data as exist on the degree of heritability of susceptibility to cancer suggest that the risk to all generations could be about double this figure. The differences between the apparent pre-conception exposure risks in these two groups are discussed and several possible explanations for the findings near the Sellafield plant, other than pre-conception radiation exposure, are presented.

This publication has 51 references indexed in Scilit: