Key Issues
Radiation Safety at Nuclear Power Plants: Studies Look at Public, Workers
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Greenpeace Study
Greenpeace and Ernest Sternglass, an anti-nuclear activist, released “Nuclear Power, Human Health and the Environment: The Breast Cancer Warning in the Great Lakes Basin” in 1995. The study claims that women in 81 counties in the Great Lakes region, where there are 36 U.S. and Canadian nuclear power plants, have an increased risk of breast cancer mortality. It also claims the 1990 National Cancer Institute study and other studies that found no cancer-nuclear power connection failed to look at a sufficiently broad radius around the plants.
The study’s findings and methodology have drawn widespread criticism among scientists and in the news media:
Livermore National Laboratory Study
The California Department of Health Services released a study in 1995 comparing cancer rates in children and young adults living near the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif., with those throughout the rest of Alameda County. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention commissioned the study.
Although the study did not find an overall excess of cancer, including leukemia or non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, young people near Livermore had two to six times as many malignant melanomas (a form of skin cancer), as expected over the 30-year period of the study (1960–91).
The researchers acknowledge that “differences in community characteristics or health behaviors” might explain this apparent excess. These include the possibility that Livermore residents screened more actively for skin cancer, the fact that the study made no adjustment for socioeconomic status and the fact that Livermore averages more days of sunlight than other areas of the county. (Greater sunlight exposure is thought to be associated with higher risk of melanoma.)
The study does not assess whether melanoma cases had any connection with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Wing Re-examination of TMI Data
In 1997, University of North Carolina researcher Steven Wing published a controversial re-evaluation of the data used in the 1990 TMI study, which found no effect on cancer incidence around the plant. Wing claimed that the accident released more radiation than had been reported previously, resulting in many accident-related cancers within 10 miles of the plant. The authors of the 1990 study, as well as other epidemiologists and the Pennsylvania Department of Health, have criticized Wing’s findings and methodology.
Greenpeace Study
Greenpeace and Ernest Sternglass, an anti-nuclear activist, released “Nuclear Power, Human Health and the Environment: The Breast Cancer Warning in the Great Lakes Basin” in 1995. The study claims that women in 81 counties in the Great Lakes region, where there are 36 U.S. and Canadian nuclear power plants, have an increased risk of breast cancer mortality. It also claims the 1990 National Cancer Institute study and other studies that found no cancer-nuclear power connection failed to look at a sufficiently broad radius around the plants.
The study’s findings and methodology have drawn widespread criticism among scientists and in the news media:
- It provides no evidence that women in the 81 Great Lakes counties live closer to nuclear power plants, or that women were exposed to significantly higher levels of radiation, than women in nearby counties that Greenpeace did not choose to study.
- The study offers no detail on important characteristics of the women in those 81 counties, such as urbanization, ethnicity or socioeconomic profile, which would help evaluate whether “selection bias” is present. (The risk of dying from breast cancer is higher in urban areas and among certain ethnic groups.)
- Results can depend on the method that researchers use to compare data. Greenpeace chose to combine the data for all women in all 81 counties and compare the total with the U.S. average. The result was 3.2 excess cancer deaths per 100,000 women—an extremely small increase. But if Greenpeace had looked at data from each of the 81 Great Lakes counties individually, it would have found something different: In slightly more than half of the counties, the breast cancer death rates are somewhat lower than the U.S. average, and in slightly less than half of them, the death rates are somewhat higher than the U.S. average. With this method, there is no consistent increase in the breast cancer death rates in all of the 81 counties.
- The reason the NCI did not extend its study to a 100-mile radius around each plant—as Greenpeace claims was necessary—is that radioactive emissions from nuclear power plants are virtually nonexistent at that radius. The nearest plant neighbor gets less than one millirem of radiation exposure from the plant annually. This is less than the average person gets annually from watching television.
Livermore National Laboratory Study
The California Department of Health Services released a study in 1995 comparing cancer rates in children and young adults living near the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif., with those throughout the rest of Alameda County. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention commissioned the study.
Although the study did not find an overall excess of cancer, including leukemia or non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, young people near Livermore had two to six times as many malignant melanomas (a form of skin cancer), as expected over the 30-year period of the study (1960–91).
The researchers acknowledge that “differences in community characteristics or health behaviors” might explain this apparent excess. These include the possibility that Livermore residents screened more actively for skin cancer, the fact that the study made no adjustment for socioeconomic status and the fact that Livermore averages more days of sunlight than other areas of the county. (Greater sunlight exposure is thought to be associated with higher risk of melanoma.)
The study does not assess whether melanoma cases had any connection with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Wing Re-examination of TMI Data
In 1997, University of North Carolina researcher Steven Wing published a controversial re-evaluation of the data used in the 1990 TMI study, which found no effect on cancer incidence around the plant. Wing claimed that the accident released more radiation than had been reported previously, resulting in many accident-related cancers within 10 miles of the plant. The authors of the 1990 study, as well as other epidemiologists and the Pennsylvania Department of Health, have criticized Wing’s findings and methodology.
