The mortality and cancer morbidity experience of workers at British Nuclear Fuels plc, 1946–1997

• Published in: International Congress series Vol. 1236; pp. 51 - 54
• Main Authors: McGeoghegan, D, Binks, K
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier B.V 01.07.2002
• Subjects: Cancer incidence; Cohort; Mortality; Nuclear workers; Radiation; Nuclear workers; Cancer incidence; Cohort; Mortality; Radiation
• ISSN: 0531-5131; 1873-6157
• DOI: 10.1016/S0531-5131(01)00781-6

We present the preliminary results of the mortality and morbidity experience of the BNFL cohort of workers. These 62 141 employees have accumulated 1 535 730 person-years of experience to the end of 1997. The low level of untraced workers, 0.67%, is indicative of the quality of the data set. The cohort has 39 882 radiation workers who have received 2185 person-sieverts of external whole-body radiation dose. Both the radiation and non-radiation workers showed the ‘healthy worker’ effect, although the all causes mortality rate for radiation workers was significantly lower than that for the non-radiation workers (RR=0.90, p<0.001). There were, however, excesses of deaths amongst the radiation workers due to cancers of the pleura, connective tissue and penis as well as due to cirrhosis, when compared with non-radiation workers. For mortality, statistically significant associations with external whole-body radiation were found for all causes of death, cancer of the larynx, testicular cancer, thyroid cancer, multiple myeloma, leukaemia excluding chronic lymphatic leukaemia (CLL), mental disorders, circulatory system diseases and ischaemic heart disease. For cancer morbidity, significant associations were found with external whole-body radiation and all malignant neoplasms, leukaemia excluding CLL, non-melanoma skin cancer, testicular cancer, multiple myeloma, non-Hodgkin lymphoma and Hodgkin's disease. The excess relative risk due to all cancers excluding leukaemia was 0.48 Sv −1 (0.14–0.86) for mortality and 0.63 Sv −1 (0.34–0.94) for morbidity, when the dose was lagged 10 years. For leukaemia excluding CLL, the excess relative risk was 1.59 Sv −1 (−0.29–4.84) for mortality and 2.75 Sv −1 (0.17–7.63) for morbidity, when the dose was lagged 2 years.