ANT 2000, Intro to Anthropology, Week 14, Spring 2004

 

Part II – Radiation and Cancer

 

Case:  Environmental Radiation and America’s Cancer Crisis

Question:  Is environmental radiation a significant causal factor in increasing cancer rates in the United States?

Researchers:  Radiation and Public Health Project

 

Cancer has become a widespread disease in the United States during the 20th Century.

For example:

-         There are approximately 1,300,000 new cases each year and some 550,000 Americans die of cancer annually.

-         Today, about one-half of all men and one-third of all women will contract some form of cancer in their lifetimes.

-         Childhood cancer has increase 26% over the past 20 years and exotic forms of brain and nerve cancer have increased by 50%.

 

Cancer rates in Florida are among the highest in the nation:

-         According to American Cancer Society data, Florida is the #1 state in the nation in terms of new cancer cases as a percent of total population.

-         Childhood cancer rates in southeastern Florida have increased three times faster than the national average.

 

Researcher at the Radiation and Public Health Project (RPHP) have examined the hypothesis that environmental radiation from nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants are a causal factor in increasing U.S. cancer rates, by studying three kinds of data: epidemiological, clinical, and case control. 

 

Epidemiology:  Using official data on breast cancer mortality, researchers studied breast cancer deaths among all U.S. women from 1950 to 1989.  They looked at mortality rates of cancer in “nuclear counties” vs. “non-nuclear counties.”  A nuclear county is within 100 miles of a nuclear power plant, and a non-nuclear county is more than 100 miles away from any nuclear power plant. Researchers found that female breast cancer death rates in nuclear counties were significantly higher than those in non-nuclear counties. However, as we learn in Statistics 101, correlation is not necessarily causation.  So, the next level of the study called for original clinical research.

 

Clinical: The clinical research is based on the baby teeth study, popularly know as the “Tooth Fairy Project.”  Why study baby teeth?  To see if radiation, in particular the known carcinogen Strontium 90 (Sr-90), is entering into and physically present in children’s bodies.  Sr-90 is interpreted as calcium by the body, absorbed into the teeth and bones, and, consequently, can be measured in baby teeth. 

 

 

Since the atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons was banned in the United States in 1963, then the levels of Sr-90 in baby teeth should have declined to nearly undetectable levels today, due to the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.  This, however, is not the case.  After a gradual decline since the 1960s, Sr-90 levels in U.S. baby teeth have been increasing again since the mid-1980s. RPHP believes that this must be due to the radiation released during the normal operation of the nation’s 103 commercial nuclear power plants.

 

Case Control: If environmental radiation is a causal factor in cancer, then the baby teeth of children with cancer should have higher levels of radiation than teeth of healthy children without cancer.  In preliminary case control comparisons of “cancer teeth” with “healthy teeth” researchers found Sr-90 levels to be 85% higher in the teeth of children diagnosed with cancer.

 

RPHP’s “Final Report of Research on the South Florida Baby Teeth and Cancer Case Study,” released in April 2003, concluded that:

 

- Radiation emissions from nuclear power plants are the predominant cause of rising Sr-90 levels in southeast Florida baby teeth.

 

-         Radiation levels are significantly higher in the teeth of children with

cancer than in the teeth of children without cancer

 

-   There is now substantial evidence that exposure to radioactive releases from nuclear reactors is a significant causal factor of increasing childhood cancer rates and of other adverse health effects in southeast Florida.

 

Although the findings of the baby teeth study have been published in a variety of scientific, peer-review journals, the findings are highly controversial.  Both the nuclear industry and the nuclear utilities have criticized this research, labeling it “junk science,” arguing that current Sr-90 levels found in baby teeth are the results of past nuclear bomb tests, and claiming that the tiny amounts of Sr-90 found in baby teeth do not pose a serious risk of cancer or threat to public health.

 

Recommended resources:

 

Jay Gould, The Enemy Within: The High Cost of Living Near Nuclear Reactors.

Harvey Wasserman, Killing Our Own: The Disaster of America’s Experience with

      Atomic Radiation.

Ralph Graeub, The Petkau Effect: The Devastating Effect of Nuclear Radiation on Human Health and the Environment.

Rachel Carson, Silent Spring.

Radiation and Public Health Project (www.radiation.org).

Nuclear Energy Institute, the nuclear industry’s public policy organization (www.nei.org)