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Is the “largest study ever conducted” on nuclear industry workers really the largest?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 March 2009

J. Estève
J. Estève*
Affiliation:
Laboratoire Statistique et Santé, CNRS, UMR 5558, CHU Lyon, 69000 Lyon, France
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Abstract

The 15-country study on cancer mortality among nuclear radiation workers, coordinated by the International Agency for Research on Cancer is repeatedly cited as “the largest study ever conducted on the subject”. This article shows that, despite the very large number of included subjects, this cohort study is less informative that two previous studies including a smaller number of persons. Moreover the statistical significance of the excess relative risk of cancer (except leukaemia) per Sievert, considered as an argument supporting the Linear No Threshold relation, is shown to be a consequence of some aspects of the design and of the lack of robustness of the method of analysis for the evaluation of the lower dose effect. After taking into account these weakness of the design, this important epidemiological study must continued since it is one of the few ways to obtain information on the effect of low dose at low dose rate on human subjects.

Keywords

epidemiologynuclear workers
Type
Research Article
Information
Radioprotection , Volume 44 , Issue 1 , January 2009 , pp. 13 - 20
Copyright
© EDP Sciences, 2009

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