Cancer morbidity in British military veterans included in chemical warfare agent experiments at Porton Down: cohort study

doi:10.1136/bmj.b655

Published 24 March 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b655
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;338:b655

Research

Cancer morbidity in British military veterans included in chemical warfare agent experiments at Porton Down: cohort study

L M Carpenter, reader in statistical epidemiology¹, L Linsell, medical statistician¹, C Brooks, data manager¹, T J Keegan, research fellow¹, T Langdon, assistant data manager¹, P Doyle, professor of epidemiology², N E S Maconochie, senior lecturer in epidemiology and medical statistics², T Fletcher, senior lecturer in environmental epidemiology³, M J Nieuwenhuijsen, research professor in environmental epidemiology, visiting professor⁴^,5, V Beral, professor and director⁶, K M Venables, reader in occupational medicine¹

¹ Department of Public Health, University of Oxford, Oxford OX3 7LF, ² Department of Epidemiology and Population Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, ³ Department of Public Health and Policy, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, ⁴ Center for Research in Environmental Epidemiology, IMIM and CIBERESP, 08003 Barcelona, Spain, ⁵ Division of Epidemiology, Public Health and Primary Care, Imperial College, London, ⁶ Cancer Epidemiology Unit, University of Oxford

Correspondence to: L M Carpenter lucy.carpenter{at}dphpc.ox.ac.uk;

K M Venables kate.venables{at}dphpc.ox.ac.uk

Objective To determine cancer morbidity in members of the armedforces who took part in tests of chemical warfare agents from1941 to 1989.

Design Historical cohort study, with cohort members followedup to December 2004.

Data source Archive of UK government research facility at PortonDown, UK military personnel records, and national death andcancer records.

Participants All veterans included in the cohort study of mortality, excluding those known to have died or been lost to follow-upbefore 1 January 1971 when the UK cancer registration systemcommenced: 17 013 male members of the UK armed forces who tookpart in tests (Porton Down veterans) and a similar group of16 520 men who did not (non-Porton Down veterans).

Main outcome measures Cancer morbidity in each group of veterans;rate ratios, with 95% confidence intervals, adjusted for agegroup and calendar period.

Results 3457 cancers were reported in the Porton Down veteranscompared with 3380 cancers in the non-Porton Down veterans.While overall cancer morbidity was the same in both groups (rateratio 1.00, 95% confidence interval 0.95 to 1.05), Porton Downveterans had higher rates of ill defined malignant neoplasms(1.12, 1.02 to 1.22), in situ neoplasms (1.45, 1.06 to 2.00),and those of uncertain or unknown behaviour (1.32, 1.01 to 1.73).

Conclusion Overall cancer morbidity in Porton Down veteranswas no different from that in non-Porton Down veterans.

© Carpenter et al 2009
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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