Study: Kids face higher cancer risk from radiation
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Infants and children are more at risk than adults of developing some cancers when exposed to radiation, for example from nuclear accidents, a United Nations scientific report has said.
Children were found to be more sensitive than adults for the development of 25 percent of tumor types, including leukemia, and thyroid, brain and breast cancer, it said.
“The risk can be significantly higher, depending on circumstances,” the UN Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation added in a statement yesterday.
UNSCEAR said it began working on the report in 2011, the same year as Japan’s Fukushima nuclear accident, although the world’s worst such disaster in 25 years was not mentioned in the statement. The committee said in May that cancer rates were not expected to rise after the Fukushima accident.
Studies into the 1986 accident at Chernobyl in Ukraine have, however, linked thyroid cancer to radioactive iodine. The thyroid is the most exposed organ as radioactive iodine concentrates there. Children are deemed especially vulnerable.
Yesterday’s report, presented to the UN General Assembly, said children and adults should be considered separately following exposure in order to predict risk more accurately.
“Because of their anatomical and physiological differences, radiation exposure has a different impact on children compared with adults,” said Fred Mettler, chair of a UNSCEAR expert group on the issue. “It is not recommended to use the same generalizations used for adults when considering the risks and effects of radiation exposure during childhood.”
Children are generally assessed along with adults in epidemiological studies, the UN committee said. UNSCEAR said it had reviewed 23 cancer types, some of which were “highly relevant for evaluating the radiological consequences” of nuclear accidents and of some medical procedures.
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