Developing additional resources

We briefly outline existing information about several cohorts in the Southern Urals, Semipalatinsk and the Altai regions, in addition to those discussed in the companion papers in this issue of Radiation and Environmental Biophysics. These include: (a) the East-Urals Radiation Trace (EURT) cohort of individuals (exposed to fallout from the September 1957 explosion of a storage tank containing liquid radioactive waste from the Mayak Production Association) as well as their offspring, (b) the cohort of exposed parents (i.e. workers of the Mayak facility) and their children, having been established with the aim of examining reproductive health, and (c) several additional cohorts in the Altai region and in Semipalatinsk, where investment of additional resources would greatly facilitate the progress of ongoing studies. Furthermore, we include a brief description of the Russian Human Radiobiology Tissue Repository, which has been established in the city of Ozyorsk and is in the process of making an inventory of autopsied tissues from 700 deceased Mayak workers and of collecting and storing donations of blood and tumor tissues from the members of the Mayak workers cohort currently residing in the city.