New research on Three Mile Island nuclear accident linked to thyroid cancer
Three Mile Island nuke accident linked to thyroid cancer, USA TODAY NETWORK, Brett Sholtis, York (Pa.) Daily Record May 31, 2017A new Penn State Medical Center study has found a link between the 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear accident and thyroid cancer cases in south-central Pennsylvania.
The study marks the first time the partial meltdown of Unit 2’s reactor can be connected to specific cancer cases, the researchers have said.
The findings may pose a dramatic challenge to the nuclear energy industry’s position that the radiation released had no effect on human health.
The study was published Monday in the medical journal Laryngoscope, one day before Exelon Corp. (EXC) announced that Three Mile Island would close in 2019. It’s likely to come as another blow to a nuclear-power industry already struggling to stay profitable…….
Dr. David Goldenberg, a surgeon and thyroid researcher, led the study after seeing anecdotal evidence for a connection.
“I’m always wary when people say ‘there’s nothing to see, here,’ ” he said…….
Although Pennsylvania has the nation’s highest rate of thyroid cancer, most of that cancer has nothing to do with Three Mile Island, Goldenberg said.
However, thyroid cancer caused by low-level radiation has a different “mutational signal” than most thyroid cancer, he said. He and his colleagues used molecular research that had been pioneered after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster to find that genetic signal.
The scientists screened out many thyroid cancer patients, limiting their study to 44 people who were born in counties around Three Mile Island, present during the March 28, 1979, accident and treated at Penn State Hershey Medical Center.
“We found a change in this signal from sporadic to radiation-induced in the affected timeline to those exposed to low-dose radiation,” Goldenberg said. Those people developed thyroid cancer on average five to 30 years after exposure and about 11 years earlier than the average thyroid cancer case.
Goldenberg stops short of saying that the accident “caused” the thyroid cancer, instead saying the accident and the cancer have a “possible correlation.” I do stop short, and I’ll tell you why,” Goldenberg said. “This is the furthest we’ve come. There are 44 patients in this study. It’s by no means conclusive.”
The next step is to expand the study through tapping into resources from other regional hospitals, he said.
The study contradicts conclusions about Three Mile Island from many nuclear energy proponents, including the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Three Mile Island gets its name because the island on which the nuclear plant sits is 3 miles down the Susquehanna River from Middletown, Pa.; it’s also less than 15 miles downriver from Pennsylvania’s state capital of Harrisburg.
University of Pittsburgh Medical Center completed a study in 2000 that found the accident did not cause an increase in cancer mortality among people living within a five-mile radius of the plant, said Neil Sheehan, Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman.
Harry Truman and the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Frank Jackson, 9 Aug 20Whether the bombing of Hiroshima or the entry of the Soviet Union into the war was the crucial event in causing the Japanese surrender can never be conclusively settled (Hiroshima at 75: bitter row persists over US decision to drop the bomb, 5 August). However, very little is said about the motives for the second bomb, on Nagasaki three days later. Few argued that it was necessary to reinforce the message of Hiroshima. Rather, the military and scientific imperative was to test a different bomb design – “Fat Man”, an implosion type using plutonium, as opposed to the uranium of Hiroshima’s “Little Boy”. To my mind that, destroying a mainly civilian city for such reasons, makes it even more of a war crime, if that is possible, than the bombing of Hiroshim.a
“Shinda Onnanoko” (“Dead Girl”), by Nâzim Hikmet, translated into Japanese by Nobuyuki Nakamoto
I come and stand at every door But no one hears my silent tread. I knock and yet remain unseen For I am dead, for I am dead.
I’m only seven, although I died In Hiroshima long ago. I’m seven now as I was then. When children die, they do not grow.
My hair was scorched by swirling flame. My eyes grew dim; my eyes grew blind. Death came and turned my bones to dust And that was scattered by the wind.
I need no fruit, I need no rice. I need no sweets, nor even bread. I ask for nothing for myself For I am dead, for I am dead.
All that I ask is that for peace You fight today, you fight today So that the children of the world May live and grow and laugh and play.
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