Factors controlling the recognition of leukemia and childhood cancers

Conference · Thu Mar 01 04:00:00 EST 1973

OSTI ID:4312277

Stewart, A M

In health physics in the healing arts. The delayed effects of low-level radiation in relation to the changing patterns of leukemia mortality are discussed and it is pointed out that there has been a long period of false impressions and conflicting theories. The earliest finding of the Oxford survey was statistical evidence of a causal relationship between childhood cancers and leukemia and obstetric radiography, but the relevant observations were followed by so much contradictory evidence from other sources that for many years the Oxford data were ascribed to biased reporting of antenatal events by the mothers of live and dead children. The subsequent discovery of comparable standards of reporting by the two groups of mothers and of radiation effects which were related not only to the amount of radiation received by the fetus but also to the exposure age, and to a series of cancer incubation periods, has made it unlikely that prenatal irradiation does not carry a cancer hazard. The negative findings of several prospective surveys (including a followup of 1,292 Abomb survivors who were exposed in utero) have never been explained and even epidemiologists express doubts about the validity of the data collected retrospective. It is concluded that no prospective survey is in a position to detect a small number of extra cancers due to prenatal exposure to low-level radiation unless it has kept a complete dossier of in utero deaths and later deaths (to provide a correct basis for calculating expected numbers of nonradiogenic cancers) and a record of how long each child was kept under surveillance. Clearly a followup which allows the whole situation to be reviewed after the youngest child has passed the age of 10 years is preferable to one which had no means of doing this. Even this would be inadequate unless the expected number of cancer deaths in both halves of the followup period were sufficient to draw a distinction between leukemias and solid tumors and to indicate their normal age distributions. (CH)

• Research Organization: Oxford Univ.; Food and Drug Administration, Rockville, Md. (USA)
• NSA Number: NSA-29-029715
• OSTI ID: 4312277
• Report Number(s): FDA--73-8029
• Country of Publication: Country unknown/Code not available
• Language: English

Related Subjects

*BIOLOGICAL RADIATION EFFECTS-- PRENATAL IRRADIATION
*FETUSES-- DELAYED RADIATION EFFECTS
*LEUKEMIA-- EPIDEMIOLOGY
*NEOPLASMS-- EPIDEMIOLOGY
*PRENATAL IRRADIATION-- BIOLOGICAL RADIATION EFFECTS
A-BOMB SURVIVORS
BIOMEDICAL RADIOGRAPHY
CARCINOGENESIS
CHILDREN
EXTERNAL IRRADIATION
HUMAN POPULATIONS
LEUKEMOGENESIS
LOW DOSE IRRADIATION
MAN
MORTALITY
N48510* --Life Sciences--Radiation Effects on Animals--Man
PATHOLOGICAL CHANGES
PREGNANCY
STATISTICS
WOMEN
X RADIATION