Radioactive contamination and clusters of cancer cases around the Sellafield
nuclear complex in West Cumbria are to be the subject of a fresh study
by the government鈥檚 independent advisers, the Committee on the Medical Aspects
of Radiation in the Environment (COMARE).
The investigations could give renewed hope to cancer victims seeking
compensation from British Nuclear Fuels, the company that runs Sellafield.
Two local families learnt earlier this month that they had lost a year-long
court case after failing to prove a link between their cancers and radioactivity
from Sellafield.
The committee鈥檚 new studies may lead to a revision of the doses of radioactivity
that people living near Sellafield are estimated to have received during
the 1950s and 1960s. 鈥楾here will be a reappraisal of the doses people received,
but how much they will differ from the original estimates I don鈥檛 know,鈥�
says Bryn Bridges, the chairman of COMARE.
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The committee is engaged in a three-part investigation. One study will
take a fresh look at the epidemiology of cancers in people living around
Sellafield and other nuclear plants. The second study will draw together
all available information relating to radioactive contamination around Sellafield
and the doses local people may have received.
鈥楾here鈥檚 information we are still trying to get from BNFL,鈥� says Bridges.
鈥業t鈥檚 been held up on the dosimetry side because BNFL has been engaged in
(the recent) court case,鈥� he explains.
The third project will try to establish a mechanism by which fathers
exposed to radiation can pass on genetic defects which result in their
children developing cancer.
In the recent case, the families鈥� lawyers argued unsuccessfully that
the children had developed leukaemia and non-Hodgkin鈥檚 lymphoma because
their fathers鈥� sperm was damaged by radiation while they worked at Sellafield.
The families suffered a further blow last week when the Health and Safety
Executive published a report largely contradicting the research on which
the plaintiffs had based their case.
The research by the late Martin Gardner, an epidemiologist at the University
of Southampton, concluded that children of workers at Sellafield were six
to eight times as likely to develop leukaemia if their fathers received
cumulative radiation doses exceeding 100 millisieverts (This Week, 24 February
1990).
The HSE re-examined Gardner鈥檚 data and concluded that only in Seascale
鈥� a village 3 kilometres south of Sellafield 鈥� was the 鈥楪ardner hypothesis鈥�
statistically valid. Ed Varney, the HSE鈥檚 deputy chief inspector for nuclear
installations, said that the link did not exist for the 90 per cent of Sellafield
workers who live outside Seascale.
The HSE鈥檚 other main finding was that an excess of cases of childhood
leukaemia or non-Hodgkin鈥檚 lymphoma was only statistically significant in
families in which the fathers began working at Sellafield before 1965.
鈥業t looks as though whatever the cause is, it鈥檚 a historical effect and
it鈥檚 confined to Seascale,鈥� says Varney.
Philip Day, a chemist at the University of Manchester who reassessed
levels of contamination around Sellafield for the plaintiffs, thinks that
the HSE鈥檚 report strengthens the argument that paternal exposure to radiation
鈥� combined with exposure of the child to radioactivity in the environment
鈥� is to blame. 鈥榃hat makes Seascale unique is that parents were contaminated
and children were growing up in a contaminated environment,鈥� he says.
