Chernobyl, childhood cancer, and chromosome 21

The Chernobyl accident and pregnancy outcome

“…The observation shows a peak in the number of Down syndrome individuals in January 1987, consisting of 12 cases; 10 infants were born and 2 were diagnosed prenatally and aborted. Changes in routine prenatal diagnosis (16) can hardly explain this finding. In eight of the cases a temporal correlation with the accident was possible.…”

Ten Years after Chernobyl

“…The results from Berlin (29) have been criticized on different grounds (31), including some arguments that appear irrelevant, such as lack of increase in Down's syndrome in Japanese survivors of the atomic bombs (only a limited number of meioses could occur in Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the extremely short period of radiation exposure). It is true that several other studies have failed to show association between the Chernobyl fallout and Down's syndrome (24,(32)(33), but low-dose ionizing radiation has also been implicated as an epidemiological factor in a recent study dealing with low-level radioactive fallout produced by atmospheric testing of atomic weapons in 1958 (in this case possibly enhanced by releases after a fire at the Windscale reactor in October 1957) and with the major fallout peak in 1963-64 (34).…”

“…Consequently, an increase in the estimated total dose from the fallout may well be similar to the normal annual background (and hence unlikely to cause easily detectable effects) and yet a 100-fold increase in the dose rate may have prevailed for some short time. Note, for instance, that the physical half-life of many Chernobyl-released radionuclides, including iodines and several 'hot-particle' associated nuclides (see 31), is short and they will temporarily increase the external dose rate considerably without affecting strongly the accumulated long-term dose arising primarily from caesium isotopes.…”

Fallout from Chernobyl Thyroid cancer in children increased dramatically in Belarus

“…EDITOR, - Neither the editorial1 nor the three articles*RF 2-4* relating to the Chernobyl reactor accident make more than a passing mention to the one major increase in malignancy that has so far been identified - namely, the greatly increased incidence of childhood thyroid cancer in the exposed population of southern Belarus, which was first reported in 1992 5,6. The pathology was documented in 1993,7 the relation to the disaster has been reviewed,8 and the paradox that isotopes of iodine may be carcinogenic to the thyroid in normal children depite their safety in adults with Graves' disease has been discussed 9.…”