1.2.3
Medical

1.2.3.1
Practitioners

References

Dr. Yalow also states (1994) that: "In WWII, 6500 radiologic technicians had an estimated 50 rem in training, with 24 months median service. A 29-year follow-up found no increased malignancies compared to army medical, laboratory, and pharmacy technicians." (Jablon 1978)

From the abstract of Boice et al, 1995, in the Journal of the American Medical Association, reporting on a case-control study to evaluate the risk of breast cancer among women occupationally exposed to ionizing radiation as radiologic technologists: In "a health survey of 105,385 women radiologic technologists… study subjects had been certified for a mean of 29 years; 63.8% of cases and 62.6% of controls worked as radiologic technologists for 10 years or more… Jobs involving radiotherapy, radioisotopes, or fluoroscopic equipment, however, were not linked to breast cancer risk, nor were personal exposures to fluoroscopy or multifilm procedures."

BEIR V (1990) states (p 317) in "Cancer at Specific Sites, Prostate, United States Radiologists" "The early U.S. radiologists are estimated to have had lifetime exposures of 2 to 20 Gy. Their cancer mortality experience has been analyzed by Matanoski et al. (1984), who reported standardized mortality ratios (SMRs) for selected cancers among members of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA), the American College of Physicians (ACP), and the American Academy of Ophthalmology and Otolaryngology (AAOO). During the period 1920-1939, SMRs for prostate cancer were 1.24 for members of RSNA, 1.03 for members of ACP, and 0.81 for members of AAOO. The excess of prostate cancer mortality in radiologists was not statistically significant (p<0.05). During the period 1940-1969, the SMRs were 1.01 for members of RSNA and ACP, 0.98 for members of AAOO and OTOL and 1.40 for members of OPH, values which were not significantly different from unity."

Dr. Hugh F. Henry, of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, reports (1961) in the Journal of the American Medical Association further on radiologists: "further on [UK and US] radiologists: Dublin and Spiegelman (1948) found age-specific mortality to be only 90% of all-physicians, but somewhat greater than for other medical specialists. Warren (1956) found the average age at death of US radiologists was 60.5 years, while the average for all physicians was 65.7 years (1930 to 1954) which was taken as showing that chronic exposure to even "low levels" of radiation is life-shortening. Seltzer and Sartwell (1958) analyzed Warren’s data and found physicians’ age-specific mortality was 58.9 years, and radiologists’ was 60.5 years; they lived 2.5% longer than expected. Court-Brown and Doll (1958) analyzed the 2 major UK radiological societies through 1956. Those joining after 1920 would have 176 deaths compared to the general population, or 169 deaths compared to physicians in general, but they had only 145 deaths. Similarly, Seltzer and Sartwell (1959) found that for 1905 to 1944, 229 deaths were compared with 211 based on the pathologists’ experience, 226 based on physicians’, and 265 as based on the rate of the general population.