HSE investigation of leukaemia and other cancers in the children of male workers at Sellafield.

  • Great Britain. Health and Safety Executive.
Date:
1993
Catalogue details

Licence: Open Government Licence

Credit: HSE investigation of leukaemia and other cancers in the children of male workers at Sellafield. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    BACKGROUND TO HSE INVESTIGATION 1 In November 1983, Yorkshire Television broadcast a programme: “Windscale - The Nuclear Laundry”. It suggested that in the village of Seascale, 3 km south of Sellafield, there was an excess of childhood leukaemia, and implied that this was due to the radioactive discharges from the plant. 2 Following the screening of the programme, the Minister of Health commissioned an independent advisory group chaired by Sir Douglas Black to investigate the claim. The Group published its findings’ in 1984. These included a review of earlier work which indicated that there was an excess of leukaemia in children in Seascale, but that for West Cumbria as a whole, the mortality from childhood cancer was near the national average. It concluded, inter alia, that the calculated radiation doses to young people in Seascale did not support the view that the radioactivity released from Sellafield* was responsible for the observed incidence of leukaemia in Seascale and its neighbourhood. 3 The Group recommended that epidemiological studies and research should be carried out on the subject, and that a specialist body with significant health representation should be set up to advise on the control of permitted radioactive discharges. This led to the setting up by the Minister for Health of the Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment (COMARE) in November 1985. Its terms of reference were “to assess and advise government on the health effects of natural and man-made radiation in the environment and to assess the adequacy of the available data and the need for further research”. 4 Professor Gardner, of the Medical Research Council Environmental Epidemiology Unit, was a member of Sir Douglas Black’s Advisory Group, later becoming a member of COMARE: he was one of a number of people who followed up the Group’s recommendation for further research. Professor Gardner set up a number of investigations including an epidemiological case-control study to examine the observed excess of childhood leukaemia and lymphoma near Sellafield in relation to certain behavioural or lifestyle variables (including those that might affect individual uptake of environmental radioactivity), and to radiation received during fathers’ employment at the Sellafield nuclear plant. 5 Using a variety of sources, the study identified 52 cases of leukaemia and 22 cases of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL) in children who had been born and diagnosed of These discharges were later reassessed in a report’ issued by COMARE