Key Issues
Radiation Safety at Nuclear Power Plants: Studies Look at Public, Workers
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Canadian Study
Because of the Gardner findings, a study was conducted in Canada to determine if there was an association between childhood leukemia and the occupational exposure of fathers to radiation prior to the time of the child’s conception.
The study was conducted by the Ontario Cancer Treatment and Research Foundation, the University of Toronto and the University of British Columbia for the Atomic Energy Control Board. It was published in August 1992. The conclusion: “No association between childhood leukemia and the occupational exposures of fathers to ionizing radiation prior to the time of conception.”
The report also noted that “the findings of this study in Ontario are not consistent with the hypothesis that childhood leukemia is associated with the occupational exposure of fathers to radiation prior to conception, as was found in the case control study at Sellafield in the United Kingdom by Gardner.”
Newcastle Study
An independent study by Professor Alan Craft and Dr. Louise Parker of the Newcastle University Medical School, released in 1992, also contradicted the Gardner study’s theory. It found that the geographical distribution of Sellafield employees does not match the geographical distribution of childhood leukemia. This refutes the suggestion that excess leukemia cases in Seascale are the result of preconception exposure of the Sellafield fathers. The study also showed that in West Cumbria (outside Seascale), where many more children had fathers with higher preconception doses than in Seascale, no excess of childhood leukemia existed.
Kinlen Studies
Two studies published in the British Medical Journal in 1993 by Leo Kinlen of the University of Oxford also found “no significant association with paternal preconception exposure to radiation as reported by Gardner and colleagues.” Kinlen faulted Gardner on several points. First, although the excess cancers were concentrated in Seascale, in West Cumbria, most of the workers at the nearby Sellafield facility lived outside the parish. Second, excess cancers were not limited—as Gardner had thought—to young victims born in Seascale, but also occurred among young Seascale residents who had not been born there. Kinlen believes a more probable cause of the Seascale cancers was “an infectious epidemic promoted by unusual population mixing in an isolated area.”
Health and Safety Executive Study
In 1993, the U.K.’s Health and Safety Executive announced the findings of its three-year investigation of leukemia and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in the children of men employed at Sellafield from 1950 to 1989. This study, broader and more detailed than Gardner’s, found “little evidence to suggest that a father’s high preconception radiation dose increases the risk of leukemia and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma for his children.” While the study found a childhood leukemia cluster in Seascale, it limited its focus almost entirely to children whose fathers started work at Sellafield before 1965. The study said it could not attribute this excess to any one cause, but it called for serious consideration of the Kinlen theory of population mixing.
Canadian Study
Because of the Gardner findings, a study was conducted in Canada to determine if there was an association between childhood leukemia and the occupational exposure of fathers to radiation prior to the time of the child’s conception.
The study was conducted by the Ontario Cancer Treatment and Research Foundation, the University of Toronto and the University of British Columbia for the Atomic Energy Control Board. It was published in August 1992. The conclusion: “No association between childhood leukemia and the occupational exposures of fathers to ionizing radiation prior to the time of conception.”
The report also noted that “the findings of this study in Ontario are not consistent with the hypothesis that childhood leukemia is associated with the occupational exposure of fathers to radiation prior to conception, as was found in the case control study at Sellafield in the United Kingdom by Gardner.”
Newcastle Study
An independent study by Professor Alan Craft and Dr. Louise Parker of the Newcastle University Medical School, released in 1992, also contradicted the Gardner study’s theory. It found that the geographical distribution of Sellafield employees does not match the geographical distribution of childhood leukemia. This refutes the suggestion that excess leukemia cases in Seascale are the result of preconception exposure of the Sellafield fathers. The study also showed that in West Cumbria (outside Seascale), where many more children had fathers with higher preconception doses than in Seascale, no excess of childhood leukemia existed.
Kinlen Studies
Two studies published in the British Medical Journal in 1993 by Leo Kinlen of the University of Oxford also found “no significant association with paternal preconception exposure to radiation as reported by Gardner and colleagues.” Kinlen faulted Gardner on several points. First, although the excess cancers were concentrated in Seascale, in West Cumbria, most of the workers at the nearby Sellafield facility lived outside the parish. Second, excess cancers were not limited—as Gardner had thought—to young victims born in Seascale, but also occurred among young Seascale residents who had not been born there. Kinlen believes a more probable cause of the Seascale cancers was “an infectious epidemic promoted by unusual population mixing in an isolated area.”
Health and Safety Executive Study
In 1993, the U.K.’s Health and Safety Executive announced the findings of its three-year investigation of leukemia and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in the children of men employed at Sellafield from 1950 to 1989. This study, broader and more detailed than Gardner’s, found “little evidence to suggest that a father’s high preconception radiation dose increases the risk of leukemia and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma for his children.” While the study found a childhood leukemia cluster in Seascale, it limited its focus almost entirely to children whose fathers started work at Sellafield before 1965. The study said it could not attribute this excess to any one cause, but it called for serious consideration of the Kinlen theory of population mixing.
