The potential for studies in other nuclear installations On the possibility of creating medico-dosimetry registries of workers at the Sberian Chemical Industrial Complex (SCIC) and the Mountain Chemical Industrial Complex (MCIC) in Tomsk, Krasnoyarsk

摘要

A multitude of epidemiological studies have contributed to the current knowledge on the health effects of ionizing radiation. Foremost among them is the follow-up of the atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki which has become the largest epidemiological investigation ever. However, while the observed health effects among the A-bomb survivors are the basis for risk estimates in radiation protection, they have been due to high dose-rate exposure and may, thus, not be fully representative for the long duration low dose-rate exposures that are of primary importance in radiation protection of workers or of the population. In view of this difficulty, great efforts have been made to recognize excess leukemia or solid cancer risks among cohorts of nuclear workers in Western Europe or the United States. But while these latter studies have bee valuable in providing evidence that radiation risks cannot greatly exceed current estimates, the doses to the worker cohorts were too low to provide improved risk estimates. There has, thus, up to now been no large cohort of persons exposed to continued low dose-rate exposures, which would complement the information on radiation risk. As stated in the introduction to this synopsis, this includes, apart fromthe information on thyroid cancers due to radioiodine, even the Chernobyl accident.