Abstract
Part I of this study presented an analysis of the solid cancer mortality data for 1950–1997 from the Japanese life-span study of the A-bomb survivors to assess the cancer risk for γ-rays in terms of the organ-specific dose for all solid cancers combined. Compared to earlier analyses, considerably more curvature in the dose-effect relation is indicated by these computations, which now suggests a dose and dose-rate effectiveness factor of about 2. The computations are extended here in order to explore the site-specific solid cancer risks for various organs. A computational method has been developed whereby the site-specific cancer risks are all simultaneously computed with global age and gender effect modifiers. This provides a more parsimonious representation with fewer parameters and avoids the large relative standard errors which would otherwise result. The sensitivity of site-specific risks to the choices of the neutron RBE is examined. The site-specific risk estimates are quite sensitive to the neutron RBE for the least shielded organs such as the breast, bladder and oesophagus. For the deeper lying organs, such as the gallbladder, pancreas and uterus, the impact of the neutrons is much lower. With an assumed neutron RBE of 35, which is in line with results on low neutron doses in major past studies on rodents and which corresponds approximately to the current ICRP radiation weighting factor for neutrons, the neutrons appear to contribute about 40% of the observed excess cancer risk in the breast, i.e. the organ that is closest to the body surface. However, this neutron contribution fraction is only about 10% for deeper lying organs, such as the colon.
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Notes
The appendices of these reports give also results obtained in terms of organ-specific doses. But the numerical values are not readily comparable to each other or to the present results, because there have been further differences between the computations.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Ralf Bigiel for valuable technical help in connection with both Parts I and II of this work. This paper makes use of the data obtained from the Radiation Effects Research Foundation (RERF) in Hiroshima, Japan. RERF is a private foundation funded equally by the Japanese Ministry of Health and Welfare and the US Department of Energy through the US National Academy of Sciences. The conclusions in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the scientific judgement of RERF or its funding agencies. This work was funded partially by the European Commission under contract FIGD–CT–2000–0079.
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Walsh, L., Rühm, W. & Kellerer, A.M. Cancer risk estimates for gamma-rays with regard to organ-specific doses. Radiat Environ Biophys 43, 225–231 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00411-004-0263-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00411-004-0263-6