THYROID cancer has started appearing sooner and spreading
faster than expected among children exposed to radiation
from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in April, 1986,
according to two studies.
A World Health Organisation team of pathologists and
epidemiologists detected 102 cases of malignant thyroid
cancer, usually not found among the children of Belarus,
a former Soviet republic near the Chernobyl site. Some of
the children affected were not born when the accident
occurred.
In another study, Vasili S Kazakov of the Belarus
Ministry of Health in Minsk, and his colleagues found
that 65 such cases have appeared since 1990 among the
children of Gomel district, the most irradiated region
studied. Gomel's normal incidence rate is one or two
cases per year.
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