This is the first time that the National Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm) has used data declassified by the army in 2013 concerning state nuclear tests in French Polynesia. Inserm thus estimates in its new study, conducted from these data and presented Monday, May 10, that these nuclear tests carried out for thirty years in the archipelago by the French army are responsible for 0.6% to 7.7 % of cases of this thyroid cancer in Polynesia.
“This is the proportion of thyroid cancers attributable to the trials among all thyroid cancers that have or will develop by people present at the time of the trials on all islands combined”, explained to Agence France-Presse Florent de Vathaire, researcher in the Inserm-Gustave-Roussy research unit and first author of the study. Either an impact “weak, but not at all non-existent”according to him.
Risk prediction analysis
In this study, the results of which are published in JAMA Network Open, the scientists conducted a risk prediction analysis.
After initial work, published in 2010, the same research team conducted a second epidemiological study of 395 cases of thyroid cancer diagnosed between 1984 and 2016 in Polynesia, and 555 controls from the general population.
“This is the first study to use confidential army reports declassified in 2013”, insisted Mr. de Vathaire. Thanks to these thousands of declassified documents, meteorological data and an interrogation of each case and witness, the authors were able to simulate the radioactive cloud of each nuclear test, and estimate the dose of radiation received by the thyroid of the participants of the study. (nearly 5 milligrays on average).
Of all the cases of cancers diagnosed (395 people), the scientists found no association “meaningful” between thyroid radiation dose and thyroid cancer risk. However, if the analysis were limited to invasive cancers requiring treatment, the relationship would appear significant.
Visiting Papeete in July 2021, Emmanuel Macron said that France had ” a debt “ towards French Polynesia for carrying out nearly 200 nuclear tests in the Pacific from 1966 to 1996, and requesting the opening of the remaining archives, with the exception of the most sensitive military data.
In 2010, Paris had for the first time recognized that these thirty years of atomic explosions had had an impact on the environment and health in Polynesia, paving the way for compensation.