New Jersey Radium Research Project: final report
Cancers among dead New Jersey subjects were almost three times the expected number. Their radiation experience apparently acted as a generalized carcinogen. Conventional clinical, laboratory and roentgenographic tests neither correlated with calculated radiation exposure nor predicted which subjects subsequently developed cancer. More subjects than expected were deaf and enough of the subjects had increased erythrocyte sedimentation rates and decreased alpha-1 serum globulin levels that both hearing tests and tests of immune competence should be undertaken among asymptomatic exposed populations at regular intervals to see whether these may indicate radiation effects prior to a fatal cancer or blood dyscrasia. If pre-terminal radium-226 burdens validly express total irradiation experience, and past exposure to shorter-lived radium-228 (mesothorium) makes it unlikely that this is so, the distribution of radium osteitis among our subjects suggests that anatomically demonstrable radiation injury occurs in the vast majority of subjects with any radium-226 burden that can be measured above background levels after twenty-five years, and in almost half of those exposed whose measured radium-226 burdens are indistinguishable from background levels. Modification of the occupational exposure standard is recommended. (PCS)
- Research Organization:
- Cabrini Medical Center, New York (USA)
- DOE Contract Number:
- EY-76-S-02-3377
- OSTI ID:
- 5523829
- Report Number(s):
- COO-3377-T1; TRN: 80-004734
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
CARCINOGENESIS
EPIDEMIOLOGY
HUMAN POPULATIONS
MORTALITY
NEW JERSEY
RADIUM 226
OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY
RADIUM 228
ANEMIAS
BODY BURDEN
CHRONIC IRRADIATION
DELAYED RADIATION EFFECTS
HEALTH HAZARDS
LOW DOSE IRRADIATION
NEOPLASMS
NUCLEAR INDUSTRY
PATHOLOGICAL CHANGES
RADIATION PROTECTION
RADIOINDUCTION
SKELETON
TOXICITY
ALKALINE EARTH ISOTOPES
ALPHA DECAY RADIOISOTOPES
BETA DECAY RADIOISOTOPES
BETA-MINUS DECAY RADIOISOTOPES
BIOLOGICAL EFFECTS
BIOLOGICAL RADIATION EFFECTS
BODY
CHRONIC EXPOSURE
DISEASES
EVEN-EVEN NUCLEI
HAZARDS
HEAVY NUCLEI
HEMIC DISEASES
INDUSTRY
IRRADIATION
ISOTOPES
MID-ATLANTIC REGION
NORTH AMERICA
NUCLEI
ORGANS
PATHOGENESIS
POPULATIONS
RADIATION EFFECTS
RADIOISOTOPES
RADIUM ISOTOPES
SAFETY
SYMPTOMS
USA
YEARS LIVING RADIOISOTOPES
560151* - Radiation Effects on Animals- Man