Photo by Brittney Butler on Unsplash
Photo by Brittney Butler on Unsplash

Children from a town contaminated by radioactive waste have faced a higher cancer risk throughout life

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Peer-reviewed: This work was reviewed and scrutinised by relevant independent experts.

Case study: A study involving observations of a single patient or group of patients.

People: This is a study based on research using people.

Radioactive waste stored in the open from the effort to develop an atomic bomb in the 1940s contaminated a nearby Missouri creek, and US researchers say the children who grew up nearby have faced a higher risk of cancer throughout their lives. The team recruited 4,209 people from the area who had previously donated their baby teeth for research - now aged between 55 and 77 years old. 24% of the participants reported having had cancer throughout their life, and the researchers say those who lived within a kilometre of the creek had a 44% higher risk of developing cancer compared to those who lived further than 20 kilometres away.

Journal/conference: JAMA Network Open

Research: Paper

Organisation/s: Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, USA

Funder: This study was supported by the grants R01ES031943, P42ES030990, P30ES000002, and T32ES007069 from the National Institutes of Health.

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