No Excess Mortality Risk Found in Counties with Nuclear Facilities

A National Cancer Institute (NCI) survey published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, March 20, 1991, showed no general increased risk of death from cancer for people living in 107 U.S. counties containing or closely adjacent to 62 nuclear facilities. The facilities in the survey had all begun operation before 1982. Included were 52 commercial nuclear power plants, nine Department of Energy research and weapons plants, and one commercial fuel reprocessing plant. The survey examined deaths from 16 types of cancer, including leukemia. In the counties with nuclear facilities, cancer death rates before and after the startup of the facilities were compared with cancer rates in 292 similar counties without nuclear facilities (control counties). The NCI survey showed that, in comparison with the control counties, some of the study counties had higher rates of certain cancers and some had lower rates, either before or after the facilities came into service. None of the differences that were observed could be linked with the presence of nuclear facilities. "From the data at hand, there was no convincing evidence of any increased risk of death from any of the cancers we surveyed due to living near nuclear facilities," said John Boice, Sc.D., who was chief of NCI's Radiation Epidemiology Branch at the time of the survey. He cautioned, however, that the counties may be too large to detect risks present only in limited areas around the plants. "No study can prove the absence of an effect," said Dr. Boice, "but if any excess cancer risk due to radiation pollution is present in counties with nuclear facilities, the risk is too small to be detected by the methods used." The survey, conducted by Seymour Jabon, Zdenek Hrubec, Sc.D., B.J. Stone, Ph.D., and Dr. Boice, was begun in 1987 for scientific purposes in response to American public health concerns, and after a British survey of cancer mortality in areas around nuclear installations in the United Kingdom showed an excess of childhood leukemia deaths near some facilities.1 No increases in total cancer mortality were found in the