Abstract
Purpose
Epidemiological studies in nuclear industry workers can produce relevant information to better appreciate the health risks related to chronic external exposure to low doses of ionizing radiation (IR). This work examined the relations between exposure to IR and mortality in workers at the French Electricity Company (EDF), followed up to year 2003.
Methods
Permanent staff who had worked for at least 1 year at EDF during period 1961–1994 and who had been monitored for exposure to IR were included (n = 22,393). One-sided trend tests for mortality according to cumulative dose and relative risks at 100 mSv were estimated using Poisson regression. Main analyses were stratified on age, sex, calendar time and education.
Results
A total of 874 deaths occurred, and 66 workers were lost to follow-up. Median age at end of follow-up was 48. None of the causes of death investigated increased significantly according to dose, except cerebrovascular diseases (p = 0.01), but this last observation was based on only 22 cases.
Conclusions
These results do not allow dismissing a possible influence of IR on cancer risk in this population. The cohort is still relatively young and therefore confidence intervals for estimated relative risks remain wide, although they have considerably narrowed since a previous analysis. Chance is a possible explanation for the association between IR and cerebrovascular mortality, due to the low number of cases on which it is based. These results thus need to be stabilized by conducting joint analyses with similar cohorts.
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Acknowledgments
The authors thank Pascale Scanff and Danièle Crescini (Institut de Radioprotection et de Sûreté Nucléaire, IRSN) for their help in the management of dosimetric data and Liliane Meler (Electricité De France, EDF) for her help in the reconstruction of career histories. They thank EDF’s occupational physicians for their help in the validation of dosimetric databases and especially Dr Eric Laporte for its implication as an occupational medicine referee. They also thank Drs Colin Muirhead (UK Health Protection Agency), Isabelle Thierry-Chef (International Agency for Research on Cancer), Alfred Mahr (Assistance Publique des Hôpitaux de Paris) and Maria Blettner (Institute of Medical Biometry, Epidemiology and Informatics) for their implication in the study’s scientific Committee, and Drs Thierry Calvez (EDF), Michèle Gonin (EDF) and Philippe Voisin (IRSN) for their implication in the study’s steering Committee. Last, they thank Drs Maylis Telle-Lamberton (IRSN) for providing personal communication. Competing interests The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. Funding This work was funded by Electricité De France. Ethics committee approval This study was conducted in agreement with the French Data Protection Authority (Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés) and the French Ethics Committee (Comité Consultatif National d’Ethique) requirements. All subjects were informed of the making of the study and of their right to be excluded from it on request.
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Laurent, O., Metz-Flamant, C., Rogel, A. et al. Relationship between occupational exposure to ionizing radiation and mortality at the French electricity company, period 1961–2003. Int Arch Occup Environ Health 83, 935–944 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00420-010-0509-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00420-010-0509-3