Sellafield children have increased cancer risk - study
Date: 20-Jun-02
Country: UK
Researchers at the University of Newcastle in northern England studied 10,000 children whose fathers worked at the plant over the past 40 years and compared them with more than 250,000 others who lived in Cumbria, the country where the plant is located.
"Throughout the whole of Cumbria, they found that the incidence of leukaemia and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma was twice as high among the Sellafield children," New Scientist magazine said yesterday.
But Heather Dickinson, who conducted the study, said the risk is small and only 13 children among 10,000 born to Sellafield workers over 41 years developed leukaemia.
Most of the increased risk is due to population mixing, the number of people moving in and out of the area, but some could be due to the amount of radiation the father was exposed to.
Dickinson said men working at the plant now receive much lower doses of radiation than in the past so the findings of the study, which was reported in the International Journal of Cancer, are unlikely to have any implications for them.