Cooperation partners

• Occupational Cancer Research Centre (OCRC), Canada
• Institut de Radioprotection et de Sûreté Nucléaire (IRSN), Paris, France
• National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), USA
• Státní Ustav Radiační Ochrany (SURO) – National Radiation Protection Institute, Prague, Czech Republic
• University of California San Francisco (UCSF), USA
• University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill, USA
• University of Southern California, (USC), USA

Objective

A worldwide joint analysis of uranium miner cohort studies is currently being conducted. This project is coordinated by Prof. Richardson from the University of North Carolina, USA. In this joint analysis, data from the USA, Canada, France and the Czech Republic are pooled together with data from the German Wismut cohort. This pooled cohort comprises around 125,000 uranium miners with approximately 8,000 persons who died from lung cancer (Rage et al., 2020, Richardson et al. 2021).

Among other findings, this collaboration is expected to provide important insights into the risk of lung cancer at low radiation exposures over long time periods. The association between radon exposure and cancers other than lung cancer or other diseases, such as cardiovascular diseases, will also be investigated with the pooled cohort.

Cooperation partners

• University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), Department of Epidemiology & Biostatistics, USA
• Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC), Canada
• Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE), USA
• National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), USA
• Institut de Radioprotection et de Sureté Nucléaire (IRSN), France
• Public Health England (PHE), UK
• Institute of Radiobiology and Radiation Protection, Astana Medical University, Kazakhstan
• Seversk Biophysical Research Center of the Russian Federal Medical and Biological Agency, Seversk, Russia

Objective

A worldwide pooled analysis of uranium processing worker cohort studies is currently being prepared. The project is coordinated by Prof. Zablotska from the University of California, USA. In addition to the data from the German Wismut cohort, this pooling project will include data from the USA, Canada, Russia, Kazakhstan, France and UK. The pooled cohort will comprise approximately 100,000 employees in uranium processing. This collaboration is expected to yield important findings on health effects of radiation exposure in uranium processing. These are still not fully investigated and understood.

This work is based on a first pooled analysis of data from uranium millers of German and Canadian cohorts, which was published in 2018 (Zablotska et al. 2018). The collaboration is currently being continued in the international pooling of studies with uranium processing workers.

Cooperation partners

• Institute of Prevention and Occupational Medicine of the DGUV (IPA), Bochum, Germany

Objective

The dose-response relationship between lung cancer risk and low-dose silica dust exposure is still controversially discussed. Due to its large study size, the high number of lung cancer deaths and the information on exposure to silica dust and radon, the Wismut cohort study offers a very good data basis to investigate this relationship and the combined effects of radon and silica dust. A statistically significant exposure-response relationship between lung cancer and silica dust was detected in an initial analysis. Further results are expected with the extension of the follow-up period by 15 years from the end of 2003 to the end of 2018. The analyses are carried out in close cooperation with the Institute of Prevention and Occupational Medicine of the German Social Accident Insurance.

Cooperation partners

• Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (BAuA), Berlin, Germany

Objective

A nested case-control study on the relationship between leukaemia and ionising radiation in Wismut workers was conducted in cooperation with the BAuA. The BAuA is the owner of the Wismut health data archive, which contains documentation of the regular occupational medical examinations of former Wismut employees. From these documents data on medical radiation exposure for the study were collected. The corresponding data on occupational radiation exposure are present at the BfS. The aim of the case-control study is to investigate the relationship between occupational radiation exposure and leukaemia mortality, taking into account radiation exposure from the medical checkup programs.

Cooperation partners

• London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK
• Helmholtz Zentrum München, Institute of Radiation Medicine, Germany
• Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Department of Statistics, Germany

Objective

Exposure to radon has a delayed effect on health. The research project investigates the temporal difference between occupational radon exposure and lung cancer mortality in the Wismut cohort. A new statistical method (DLNM, distributed lag non-linear models) was applied and extended, the results were recently published in 2019 (Aßenmacher et al. 2019). The results indicate that the risk of lung cancer mortality may increase already two years after exposure to radon. Furthermore, it was shown that a possible death from lung cancer occurs on average about 15 years after the onset of radiation-induced inflammation of the lung tissue.