Radiation-related health hazards to uranium miners
- PDF / 587,291 Bytes
- 15 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 39 Downloads / 171 Views
REVIEW ARTICLE
Radiation-related health hazards to uranium miners Yuliya Semenova 1,2 & Lyudmila Pivina 1,2 & Yersin Zhunussov 1 & Marat Zhanaspayev 1 & Salvatore Chirumbolo 3,4 & Zhanna Muzdubayeva 1 & Geir Bjørklund 5 Received: 8 February 2020 / Accepted: 3 June 2020 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Concerns on health effects from uranium (U) mining still represent a major issue of debate. Any typology of active job in U mines is associated with exposure to U and its decay products, such as radon (Rn), thorium (Th), and radium (Ra) and its decay products with alpha-emission and gamma radiation. Health effects in U miners have been investigated in several cohort studies in the USA, Canada, Germany, the Czech Republic, and France. While public opinion is particularly addressed to pay attention to the safety of nuclear facilities, health hazard associated with mining is poorly debated. According to the many findings from cohort studies, the most significant positive dose-response relationship was found between occupational U exposure and lung cancer. Other types of tumors associated with occupational U exposure are leukemia and lymphoid cancers. Furthermore, it was found increased but not statistically significant death risk in U miners due to cancers in the liver, stomach, and kidneys. So far, there has not been found a significant association between U exposure and increased cardiovascular mortality in U miners. This review tries to address the current state of the art of these studies. Keywords Occupational cohorts . Uranium miners . Radon exposure . Cancers
Introduction Uranium (U) is a well-known naturally occurring radioactive element that is positioned along with thorium (Th) and other elements such as plutonium (Pu) in the actinide group of the periodic table. The element has an atomic number of 92, and an atomic mass of 238,02891 U. Out of all naturally occurring chemical elements, U has the highest atomic weight, and according to past reports, it should be formed due to supernova explosions (Plant et al. 1999). Uranium is rather common in rocks and soils with the average concentration in the earth’s Responsible editor: Georg Steinhauser * Geir Bjørklund [email protected] 1
Semey Medical University, Semey, Kazakhstan
2
CONEM Kazakhstan Environmental Health and Safety Research Group, Semey Medical University, Semey, Kazakhstan
3
Department of Neurosciences, Biomedicine and Movement Sciences, University of Verona, Verona, Italy
4
CONEM Scientific, Verona, Italy
5
Council for Nutritional and Environmental Medicine (CONEM), Toften 24, 8610 Mo i Rana, Norway
crust about 2–3 mg/kg. Igneous rocks have particularly high contents of U. Alkaline granites are the richest in U, where its concentration can reach 100 g/t. Out of sedimentary rocks, clayey rocks have the highest concentrations of U equal to 3–4 mg/kg. In contrast, carbonate and clastic rocks are poor in U with the average values of 0.45–0.59 mg/kg for clastic rocks and of 2.2–2.5 mg/kg for carbonate rocks
Data Loading...
