Deterministic effects from occupational radiation exposures in a cohort of Mayak PA workers: data base description

Project 2.3 of the Joint Coordinating Committee on Radiation Effects Research (JCCRER) is a study of deterministic health effects among a cohort of Russia nuclear workers. The preliminary study population includes a stratified random sample of 221 radiation workers who were employed in a cohort of 8,055 workers at the Mayak PA facilities for at least one year during the period from 1948 to 1958. High annual doses, approaching 1 Gy per year from external and internal radiation sources, were reported for a significant proportion of the workers in this cohort. The present data set includes 96 cases of chronic radiation sickness (CRS), 14 cases of acute radiation syndrome (ARS) and 13 cases of plutonium pneumosclerosis (PPn). The remainder of the sample consists of "uninjured workers" who had no known history of radiation illness or injury; however, the uninjured workers are not "controls" for radiation exposure. The data base is currently being expanded to 600 individuals sampled from the cohort of workers from 1948 to 1958 to allow a more complete analysis of the deterministic health effects and comparisons with existing health effect models. The final data base will be used with state-of-the-art modeling techniques to determine threshold doses and dose-response relationships for key clinical diagnostic variables.