Flawed Radiation Data Used to Set Safety Limits May Endanger Elderly and Kids

LONDON (February 25, 1998 10:06 p.m. EST http://www.nando.net) - Children and the elderly may be getting exposed to damaging levels of radiation from nuclear plants because of flawed data used to set safety limits, New Scientist magazine said on Wednesday.

The weekly journal said a study by British epidemiologist Alice Stewart showed the very young and the elderly were more sensitive to radiation damage than experts had realised.

Regulatory agencies estimate the risks of exposure to radiation by using rates comparing cancer among people living in Nagasaki and Hiroshima in 1950, five years after the United States dropped atomic bombs on them, and people from other Japanese cities.

But Stewart said children and old people were under-represented among the survivors used in the data.

"The atom bomb data are no good as a basis for radiation safety regulations," she told New Scientist.

She compared 2,601 survivors who suffered from acute radiation injuries with 63,072 survivors who did not.

"Stewart found that of those with acute injuries, children who were under 10 when the bombs exploded were a thousand times as likely to die of cancer as people aged between 10 and 55," the magazine said.

The study also found that people over 55 at the time of the explosions were twice as likely to die of cancer as those aged between 10 and 55.

Stewart said the young and old were more sensitive because their immune systems, which control vulnerability to cancers, were either developing or breaking down.

Her study is due to be published by the Scientific and Technological Options Assessment unit of the European Parliament.