NEWS AND VIEWS: Newly published health study reveals danger to clean-up workers' offspring (04/21/02)

NEWS AND VIEWS

Newly published health study reveals danger to clean-up workers' offspring

by Larissa Oprysko

NEW HAVEN, Conn. - A recent Israeli-Ukrainian health study published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine found that parents who worked as liquidators (nuclear clean-up workers) at the Chornobyl reactor were seven times more likely to have children born with multiple changes in their DNA.

Scientists had long suspected that those who participated in the clean-up operation immediately following the explosion and fire at the Chornobyl reactor in April-July 1986 and September-October 1986, were exposed to the highest doses of radiation.

The team of scientists from Ukraine and Israel conducted their study by looking at two types of families: Ukrainian citizens and Israeli immigrants. The participants included families of liquidators in which there were at least two children, one child born before a parent's exposure to radiation and one born after. Of all the families tested, the father was the liquidator with the exception of one family where both parents were involved with the clean-up.

The study focused on children who were conceived after parental exposure to radiation and found their DNA differed from that of their siblings conceived before the disaster. The children born after the 1986 disaster were screened for a DNA fingerprint that was not found in either parent's DNA. These new bands of fingerprints found in the children's DNA were tested three times to make sure there were no errors. The children's older siblings, conceived before April of 1986, and families not exposed to the radiation functioned as the control group for the study.

The study found a shocking sevenfold increase in the appearance of new bands of DNA in those individuals conceived after April 1986. "These results indicate that low doses of radiation can induce multiple changes in human germline DNA," said the authors of the study. The human germline is the collection of genes that parents pass on to their children. The researchers concluded that their results "support the conclusions reached by other groups using different methods, demonstrating that low-dose ionizing radiation induces mutational changes in human genome." They do not rule out the possibility of prolonged effects from the mutations.

The results of this study are reported in the Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences, a journal published in Great Britain.

Other studies have also found significant genetic damage resulting from exposure to Chornobyl radiation. One of the most disturbing was a 1994 study by a team of researchers from the University of Hiroshima, led by Dr. Yukio Sato, who studied over 30,000 newborns and stillborn fetuses in Belarus. The study found a high prevalence of children born with serious deformations such as extra or missing digits, missing critical organs, spina bifida and severe cleft palates.

Although these anomalies sometimes occur naturally, the Japanese study found that they occurred at twice the normal rate among the infants whose parents were exposed to radiation following the Chornobyl disaster. The Ukrainian Ministry of Health also has reported that birth defects have doubled since the Chornobyl disaster.

Recently, the Children of Chornobyl Relief Fund obtained a large volume of prenatal vitamins to strengthen maternal health and prevent a variety of birth defects. The vitamins, earmarked for regions in norhtern Ukraine, are scheduled to arrive in Ukraine as part of CCRF's 30th medical airlift in April. For further information, please contact Olena Welhasch at the Children of Chornobyl Relief Fund's office in Short Hills, N.J., (973) 376-5140 or Larissa Oprysko at CCRF's New Haven office, (203) 387-0507.

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