The nuclear industry family study: linkage of occupational exposures to reproduction and child health

Abstract

Concern about high rates of leukaemia and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma among children and young adults living near certain nuclear establishments in the United Kingdom has led to a series of population based case-control studies. 1 2 All these studies have investigated the possibility that the excesses were related to parental employment in those establishments, but the statistical power to detect anything other than extreme associations was very low owing to the rarity of employment in the nuclear industry (coupled with the rarity of the outcome). Moreover, if harmful parental occupational exposures were to exist it is unlikely that their effect would be restricted to cancer among workers' children; such exposures might be expected to influence a broader spectrum of reproductive problems, including infertility, miscarriage, and congenital malformations. These other aspects of reproduction remain largely unexplored. The nuclear industry family study was set up to examine the occupational histories of a large cohort of nuclear industry workers in relation to all aspects of their reproduction and children's health. A full …