Assessing the risk of cancer linked to the atom and to ionizing radiation: this exercise has been the subject of numerous studies over the last decades. Those published on August 16 in the British Medical Journal however, have a special status since they come from the analysis of data from nearly 310,000 workers in the nuclear industry, followed on average for more than thirty years and recruited in France, the United Kingdom and the United States. The main result is the 52% increase in the risk of death from so-called “solid” cancers (i.e. excluding leukemia and lymphoma) for a cumulative dose of one gray (Gy) received by an individual.
“One gray represents a very high dose of radiation: the average dose received by the workers in the cohort is around twenty thousandths of a gray. [mGy]details Klervi Leuraud, epidemiologist at the Institute for Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN), and co-author of this work. The risk estimate that we publish means that in a population of 1,000 workers followed for thirty-five years, aged on average 66 at the end of follow-up and having accumulated this dose during their career, there would be 91 deaths from solid cancer, one of which is attributable to occupational exposure to ionizing radiation. »
The methodology used consists of recording the cumulative doses received by individuals, measured using a dosimeter, compared with the risk of cancer mortality. The estimate obtained does not differ greatly from the previous analysis from this same cohort, published in 2015. This then concluded that the risk of death from “solid cancer” increased by 47% for each Gy received. The ten additional years of follow-up therefore did not lead the authors – researchers at the University of California at Irvine, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) or within national institutions responsible for occupational health or nuclear security – just raise their assessment by five points.
” To be careful “
However, the accumulation of new data suggests calling into question the so-called “linear no-threshold” model generally used in radiation protection, according to which the risk of cancer is proportional to exposure. This model is based on the cohort of Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors and makes it possible, by extrapolation, to assess the extent of the risk of small doses received repeatedly by employees of the nuclear industry or medical personnel. working in contact with ionizing radiation.
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