Editorial: Thyroid cancer and the Chernobyl accident
- Cambridge Univ. (United Kingdom)
The accident at the Chernobyl power station nearly 10 years ago was unprecedented in the exposure of a very large population to high levels of fallout including high levels of isotopes of iodine, predominantly {sup 131}I. An increase in incidence of childhood thyroid cancer was first observed in 1990 in Belarus and in the Ukraine, and the first reports in the Western literature were published in 1992. At a symposium in Nagasaki in June 1994, the numbers of cases that had occurred between 1990 and 1993 in Belarus, a country with a population of just over 10 million, was reported to be 233, and in the heavily contaminated northern parts of the Ukraine, with a population of about 7 million, 36 cases occurred in the same period. To put these figures into perspective, the number of childhood thyroid cancers registered in England and Wales over a 30-year period was 154, an average of 5 cases per yr in a population of 50 million people, with about 10 million children under 15 yr of age. The initial reports of such a great increase in childhood thyroid cancers in the areas exposed to fallout from Chernobyl were at first greeted in the West with some skepticism. The latent period between exposure and development of thyroid cancer was surprisingly short, based on experience with thyroid carcinomas developing after external radiation to the neck. The reliability of the figures based on the pathological diagnosis was questioned because the cases had not been confirmed by Western pathologists, and because the known high frequency of papillary microcarcinoms in adults raised the possibility that the reported incidence was resulted form increased ascertainment and not a true increase in incidence. 14 refs.
- OSTI ID:
- 393902
- Journal Information:
- Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, Vol. 81, Issue 1; Other Information: PBD: Jan 1996
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
APPLIED STUDIES
57 HEALTH AND SAFETY
55 BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
BASIC STUDIES
THYROID
NEOPLASMS
CHERNOBYLSK-1 REACTOR
REACTOR ACCIDENTS
RADIATION ACCIDENTS
IODINE 131
RADIONUCLIDE KINETICS
CHILDREN
RADIATION DOSES
DELAYED RADIATION EFFECTS
RADIOSENSITIVITY
SCREENING
CARCINOGENESIS
RISK ASSESSMENT
FALLOUT