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Important Research Findings
| Breast cancer mortality among female radiologic technologists in the United States
(2002
) | | | Breast cancer has been linked with short-term, high-dose radiation exposures in studies of the Japanese atomic bomb survivors and patients irradiated for various medical conditions. But the effects of chronic exposure to radiation are less clear. To examine the effects of long-term exposure to radiation in radiation technologists, we used the decade the technologist first began working as an indicator of the level of radiation exposure received. Compared to women technologists who started working in the 1960s or later, the risk of dying from breast cancer was only slightly higher in technologists first employed in the 1950s; however, the risk was two and a half times higher in women who first worked in the 1940s, and about three times greater in those who began working before 1940. Even though the risk seems high, it is important to realize that these research findings are based on a small number of breast cancer deaths. For example, among 802 women who started working before 1940, 19 died from breast cancer. Moreover, many of these breast cancers were likely due to other causes.
| | | [Abstract] [PubMed] | | |
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