2009/06/30 by Peter Jacob, W. Rühm, Linda Walsh +3 · 105 citations
Medicine · Health Professions · #Radiation Dose and Imaging #Radioactivity and Radon Measurements #Occupational and environmental lung diseases #Medicine #Cancer incidence #Cancer #Absolute risk reduction #Epidemiology #Relative risk #Ionizing radiation #Incidence (geometry) #Occupational exposure #Risk assessment #Environmental health #Standardized mortality ratio #Demography #Toxicology #Internal medicine #Population #Confidence interval #Irradiation #Biology
paper · pdf · doi:10.1136/oem.2008.043265
published in Occupational and Environmental Medicine 66(12), 789-796 (BMJ)
openalex publication_date 2009/06/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Occupational exposures to ionising radiation mainly occur at low-dose rates and may accumulate effective doses of up to several hundred milligray. The objective of the present study is to evaluate the evidence of cancer risks from such low-dose-rate, moderate-dose (LDRMD) exposures. Our literature search for primary epidemiological studies on cancer incidence and mortality risks from LDRMD exposures included publications from 2002 to 2007, and an update of the UK National Registry for Radiation Workers study. For each (LDRMD) study we calculated the risk for the same types of cancer among the atomic bomb survivors with the same gender proportion and matched quantities for dose, mean age attained and mean age at exposure. A combined estimator of the ratio of the excess relative risk per dose from the LDRMD study to the corresponding value for the atomic bomb survivors was 1.21 (90% CI 0.51 to 1.90). The present analysis does not confirm that the cancer risk per dose for LDRMD exposures is lower than for the atomic bomb survivors. This result challenges the cancer risk values currently assumed for occupational exposures.