Jul 24 Washington [VOA]. Researchers say radioactive fallout from the 1986 nuclear accident in Chernobyl, Ukraine, has had a health impact in Greece. VOA reports that an article in the professional journal "Nature" [July 25th issue] reports that the nuclear blast apparently has increased the incidence of leukemia in infants born shortly afterward.
The Chernobyl nuclear power plant explosion 10 years ago spewed out several times the fallout of the US atomic bomb at Hiroshima, Japan, during World War Two.
Studies measuring the radiation in soil samples have found that outside the former Soviet Union the contamination was highest in Greece and Austria and also high in the Scandinavian countries. The exposure began soon after the accident and was greatest for about one year.
Until now, the only health impact documented after the Chernobyl blast was more thyroid cancer in children in Ukraine and neighbouring Belarus. But investigators at the University of Athens Medical School and the Harvard Center for Cancer Prevention in Boston say the fallout may also be responsible for an excess number of leukemia in Greek children born after the explosion.
At the Harvard Center, Dr. Dimitrios Trichopoulos [tree-kahp-oo-luss] says the increased incidence of the disease was seen in children under one year old who apparently got toxic doses of radiation while they were still foetuses at the time of the blast.
"Children that were irradiated as a result of the fallout from Chernobyl in Greece while they were in an early stage in their intra-uterine life -- that is to say, in the womb of their mothers -- have a two to three times excess risk of infant leukemia, an unusual form of leukemia that affects children during the first year of their lives".
Data from a national health register show that the frequency of infant leukemia in Greek children born within one year of the blast increased to about six in 10-thousand from just three in 10-thousand for those born either before the nuclear accident or more than one year later when the fallout had dissipated. The frequency increased as the distance to the blast site decreased -- up to 12 cases per 10-thousand for children born in high radioactivity areas.
"The significance of the finding is not so much in terms of public health importance because this is a relatively rare form of leukemia -- less than 10 per cent of childhood leukemia. But it indicates that ionising radiation, even at very low levels -- because that was a very low level exposure -- can cause cancer, which is a contentious point in the international literature".
Dr. Trichopoulos says the fact that no leukemia increase occurred in children conceived after the thinning of the fallout suggests that nuclear contamination has no effect on the reproductive organs of mothers and fathers.
"This is an important issue because there has been extensive discussion of the possibility that people working in nuclear plants may be exposed, which is quite likely, to some ionising radiation. Particularly in England, there has been tremendous public interest in the possibility that these workers may give birth to children who are at increased risk of leukemia. This we have not found".
But a British scientist is skeptical of the link between Chernobyl and increased infant leukemia. In a "Nature" magazine commentary accompanying the research, Sarah Darby of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund in Oxford writes that the study was based on only 12 cases of the disease -- a very small sample. She further notes that no leukemia increase was recorded among children older than one year who also were foetuses when radiation in Greece was highest.
She calls for more data from the study and for corroborating evidence from other nations. Dr. Trichopoulos agrees that more research is needed and hopes that similar studies are carried out in the other areas of high Chernobyl contamination -- Austria and Scandinavia.