COULD low-level radiation trigger fatal heart disease? Maybe, says a major study of nuclear-power workers in the US.
Previous studies have suggested that, as well as causing cancer, radiation might also cause cardiovascular problems in some people. For instance, there appear to be increases in cardiovascular disease among people exposed to radiation from the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, and among those affected by the 1986 accident at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine (New 杏吧原创, 30 October 1999, p 17).
Now Geoffrey Howe鈥檚 team at Columbia University in New York has compared the causes of death of 53,698 employees at 52 nuclear stations in the US between 1979 and 1997 with their recorded doses of low-level radiation.
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There was no statistically significant link between the workers鈥� radiation exposure and deaths from cancers. Instead, the strongest correlation was with the 248 deaths from heart disease, suggesting that radiation might be implicated (Radiation Research, vol 162, p 517). Because the association was stronger than that found in other studies, Howe warns that the finding 鈥渘eeds cautious interpretation鈥�.
