Uranium carcinogenicity in humans might depend on the physical and chemical nature of uranium and its isotopic composition: results from pilot epidemiological study of French nuclear workers

Details

Serval ID
serval:BIB_DB1B08DCC00C
Type
Article: article from journal or magazin.
Collection
Publications
Title
Uranium carcinogenicity in humans might depend on the physical and chemical nature of uranium and its isotopic composition: results from pilot epidemiological study of French nuclear workers
Journal
Cancer Causes & Control
Author(s)
Guseva Canu Irina, Jacob S., Cardis E., Wild Pascal, Caër Sylvaine, Auriol B., Garsi Jérôme P., Tirmarche M., Laurier Dominique
ISSN
1573-7225 (Electronic)
ISSN-L
0957-5243
Publication state
Published
Issued date
11/2011
Peer-reviewed
Oui
Volume
22
Number
11
Pages
1563-1573
Language
english
Notes
Publication types: Journal Article ; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Publication Status: ppublish
Abstract
To study the cancer risk related to protracted, low-dose exposure to different industrial uranium compounds, paying attention to their isotopic composition and solubility.
Two thousand and ninety-seven workers employed at the AREVA NC uranium processing plant (France) were followed up for mortality from 1960 to 2006. Historical exposure to uranium and other carcinogenic chemical and physical pollutants was assessed on the basis of the plant-specific job-exposure matrix. For each type of uranium, Cox regression models stratified on sex and calendar period, and adjusted for socioeconomic status and potentially confounding co-exposures were used to estimate hazard ratios (HRs) for mortality from lung cancer (53 deaths) and lymphatic and hematopoietic tissue malignancies (21 deaths).
We observed that exposure to reprocessed uranium entails increasing risks of mortality from lung cancer and lymphatic and hematopoietic malignancies (the most significant HR being respectively 1.14 (95% CI: 1.00-1.31) and 1.20 (95% CI: 1.01-1.43) per unit of a time-lagged log-transformed continuous exposure scores), and that the HRs tend to increase with decreasing solubility of the compounds.
Our results suggest that uranium carcinogenicity may depend on isotopic composition and solubility of uranium compounds. This study is the first to show the carcinogenic effect of slowly soluble reprocessed uranium on two uranium target organs. This finding is consistent with data from epidemiological and experimental studies on similar compounds but need to be confirmed in the more powerful dose-response analysis.

Keywords
Adenocarcinoma/epidemiology, Adenocarcinoma/mortality, Adult, Cohort Studies, Female, France/epidemiology, Humans, Lung Neoplasms/epidemiology, Lung Neoplasms/mortality, Male, Middle Aged, Neoplasms, Radiation-Induced/epidemiology, Neoplasms, Radiation-Induced/mortality, Occupational Exposure/adverse effects, Occupational Exposure/statistics & numerical data, Uranium Compounds/poisoning
Pubmed
Web of science
Create date
12/09/2017 15:00
Last modification date
20/08/2019 16:00
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