Reproductive life events in the population living in the vicinity of a nuclear waste reprocessing plant

When do involuntarily infertile couples choose to seek medical help?

“…The selected areas were the towns of Hillion, La M eaugon, Saint-Julien, and Yffiniac (vicinity of SaintBrieuc, Brittany, France) and the canton of Beaumont-Hague (19 towns, Normandy, close to Cherbourg), in which a nuclear waste reprocessing plant is located. The methodology of this study, which follows a previous report (20), has been described in detail elsewhere (19). A two-stage probability sampling method was used to identify a representative sample of French-speaking adult women (aged 18-60 years) living in the selected areas.…”

“…The eligibility criteria were occurrence of a pregnancy (regardless of the outcome) or a pregnancy attempt that lasted for at least 1 year between 1985 and the time of the interview in 2000. A total of 1,616 households (38%) included an eligible woman and we obtained reproductive history information for 1,183 of these women (participation rate ¼ 73% of those eligible) (19). The study received the approval of the relevant French government oversight agency (the Commission Nationale de l'Informatique et des Libert es).…”

“…This study is based on a survey of the general population, designed to compare the occurrence of reproductive life events between two rural areas and examine the association between adverse reproductive events and exposure to ionizing radiation (18,19). The selected areas were the towns of Hillion, La M eaugon, Saint-Julien, and Yffiniac (vicinity of SaintBrieuc, Brittany, France) and the canton of Beaumont-Hague (19 towns, Normandy, close to Cherbourg), in which a nuclear waste reprocessing plant is located.…”

Estimation of the frequency of involuntary infertility on a nation-wide basis

“…When the analysis was restricted to the first period of unprotected intercourse, 23% of women had not conceived within the first 12 months of attempt (varying from 33% in Poland down to 15% in South Italy); when the most recent time of unprotected intercourse was considered (including current attempts started not more than 5 years before interview), the proportion of women who had not conceived within 12 months of unprotected intercourse was 29% . In a historically prospective study in two French rural areas conducted in 2000 that considered pregnancy attempts started between 1985 and 2000, Slama et al (2008) reported a rate of 12-month involuntary infertility of 16%. In a prospective study among Danish first pregnancy planners followed-up for six months, 256 couples out of 430 conceived , which, after taking into account censoring, corresponds to a 6-month involuntary infertility rate of 36%.…”

Prolonged time to pregnancy in residents exposed to ionising radiation in cobalt-60-contaminated buildings

“…A cohort study from Canada did not reveal any evidence that diagnostic radiation in females during early adulthood increased the risk of infertility 3. For the population living near a French nuclear waste reprocessing plant, no evidence of deceased fertility, measured by TTP, was found in a cross-sectional study 17. Thus, there is as yet little or no evidence in the literature to support a hypothesis that low-dose radiation detrimentally affects fertility or TTP in men or women.…”