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Temporal trends in childhood leukaemia incidence following exposure to radioactive fallout from atmospheric nuclear weapons testing

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An Erratum to this article was published on 21 May 2010

Abstract

Notably raised rates of childhood leukaemia incidence have been found near some nuclear installations, in particular Sellafield and Dounreay in the United Kingdom, but risk assessments have concluded that the radiation doses estimated to have been received by children or in utero as a result of operations at these installations are much too small to account for the reported increases in incidence. This has led to speculation that the risk of childhood leukaemia arising from internal exposure to radiation following the intake of radioactive material released from nuclear facilities has been substantially underestimated. The radionuclides discharged from many nuclear installations are similar to those released into the global environment by atmospheric nuclear weapons testing, which was at its height in the late-1950s and early-1960s. Measurements of anthropogenic radionuclides in members of the general public resident in the vicinity of Sellafield and Dounreay have found levels that do not differ greatly from those in persons living remote from nuclear installations that are due to ubiquitous exposure to the radioactive debris of nuclear weapons testing. Therefore, if the leukaemia risk to children resulting from deposition within the body of radioactive material discharged from nuclear facilities has been grossly underestimated, then a pronounced excess of childhood leukaemia would have been expected as a consequence of the short period of intense atmospheric weapons testing. We have examined childhood leukaemia incidence in 11 large-scale cancer registries in three continents for which data were available at least as early as 1962. We found no evidence of a wave of excess cases corresponding to the peak of radioactive fallout from atmospheric weapons testing. The absence of a discernible increase in the incidence of childhood leukaemia following the period of maximum exposure to the radioactive debris of this testing weighs heavily against the suggestion that conventional methods are seriously in error when assessing the risk of childhood leukaemia from exposure to man-made radionuclides released from nuclear installations.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Mr. T. Vincent of the Childhood Cancer Research Group, University of Oxford, for supplying British childhood leukaemia data from the National Registry of Childhood Tumours, Dr. A. P. Polednak of the Connecticut Tumor Registry for supplying additional leukaemia registration data, Dr. E. Milne of the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research, Perth, for providing registration data for acute lymphoblastic leukaemia in Western Australia, and the Nordic cancer registries for providing data to one of us (SCD). We are grateful to the members of the Committee Examining Radiation Risks of Internal Emitters (CERRIE) for interesting discussions during the Committee meetings, and especially to Dr. C. R. Muirhead for his insightful contributions. We thank the anonymous referees for their helpful comments on the original manuscript. Finally, we wish to acknowledge the influence of the late Professor Sir Richard Doll and the late Mr. Len Salmon on the concept of this study. The Childhood Cancer Research Group receives support from the Department of Health and the Scottish Executive.

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  1. Dalton Nuclear Institute, The University of Manchester, Pariser Building, G Floor, Sackville Street, PO Box 88, Manchester, M60 1QD, UK

    Richard Wakeford

  2. Clinical Trial Service Unit, University of Oxford, Richard Doll Building, Roosevelt Drive, Headington, Oxford, OX3 7LF, UK

    Sarah C. Darby

  3. Childhood Cancer Research Group, University of Oxford, Richards Building, Old Road, Headington, Oxford, OX3 7LG, UK

    Michael F. G. Murphy

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Correspondence to Richard Wakeford.

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An erratum to this article can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00411-010-0294-0

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Wakeford, R., Darby, S.C. & Murphy, M.F.G. Temporal trends in childhood leukaemia incidence following exposure to radioactive fallout from atmospheric nuclear weapons testing. Radiat Environ Biophys 49, 213–227 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00411-010-0266-4

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