"Low Level
Radiation Health Effects: Compiling  the Data"

Revision 1
March 19, 1998
by Radiation, Science, and Health, Inc.,
Edited by J. Muckerheide

1.2.2
Ocupational

1.2.2.1
Weapons Plant Workers

References

"...of morbidity and mortality data in a cohort of 542 male workers, who had accumulated individual doses in excess of 500 mSv and up to ~2 Sv, by the end of 1983. and an overlapping cohort of 470 workers who were involved in fighting the Windscale pile fire in 1957 or in subsequent cleanup operations, having a collective occupational radiation dose of ~180 person-Sv.

"A clear correlation was seen between recorded cumulative external radiation dose and the incidence in peripheral blood lymphocyte chromosomes of translocations scored by banding, but as expected, no correlation was seen between total dose and the incidence of unstable aberrations such as dicentrics, rings, and acentric fragments..."

"In the >500-mSv, cohort, overall mortality to date is not significantly different from the U.K. national average, corrected for age, sex. and social class, and the slight excess of observed over expected deaths is due not to cancer but to diseases of the circulatory, system. There is actually- a slight deficit overall against expectation to date of deaths from malignant disease, due in part to a large deficit against expectation of lung cancer deaths. However there is a nonsignificant increase against expectation in cancer deaths from haemopoietic and Iymphatic tissues... Comparable data for the Windscale fire cohort show a similar deficit of cancer deaths against expectation.

"Up-to-date cancer incidence data for these cohorts are reviewed and continue to show rates below those expected in the general population. Thus, in a population of workers exposed during their occupation over many years to radiation doses that would be considered unacceptable today, and studied as a "bellwether" for predicting risks to current workers, there is evidence at a cellular level of their having received that exposure, but as yet no evidence of unpredicted harm"