BMJ 1995;311:511 (19 August)

Letters

Thyroid cancer in the United States since accident at Chernobyl

EDITOR,--V A Stsjazhko and colleagues' letter on childhood thyroid cancer near Chernobyl raises serious issues on a broader scale.1 If fallout from Chernobyl travelled hundreds of kilometres it seems reasonable that similar findings may occur in more distant populations.

Fallout from Chernobyl began arriving in Connecticut in the United States, 7250 km west of the reactor, about 15 days after the explosion which occurred on 26 April 1986. The concentration of iodine-131 (one of the few radionuclides tracked) in Connecticut's milk increased in the weeks after the accident (the state average in 1983-90 was about 0.07 Bq/1).2

The rate of thyroid cancer among children aged under 15 in Connecticut rose sharply (from 1.6 to 3.1 per million) after 1989 (figure), when increases in children in the area around Chernobyl began.3 4 This change is similar to that seen in the (upwind) Ukraine.1 It is also intriguing to juxtapose rates of thyroid . . . [Full text of this article]


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Relevant Article

Childhood thyroid cancer since accident at Chernobyl
V A Stsjazhko, A F Tsyb, N D Tronko, G Souchkevitch, and K F Baverstock
BMJ 1995 310: 801. [Extract] [Full Text]

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