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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

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Abstract

Objective

To study the cancer risk related to protracted, low-dose exposure to different industrial uranium compounds, paying attention to their isotopic composition and solubility.

Methods

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).

Results

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.

Conclusion

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.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the Chief Medical Officer of the AREVA group, Dr. Acker, as well as all people from the AREVA NC Pierrelatte plant who took part in this study. We gratefully acknowledge Dr. Blanchardon and Dr. Paquet from the IRSN for helping us to understand the biological mechanism of reprocessed uranium compounds. We also thank our colleague, Mr. Samson, from the IRSN and our colleagues from the “Alpha risk” project network for their advice and their review of this paper. This work was funded by the IRSN and AREVA (PIC-Epidemiology 2006/2009 grant), with partial financial support from the EC (EURATOM FIP6-516483 grant).

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut de Radioprotection et de Sûreté Nucléaire, Service de Radiobiologie et d’Epidémiologie, BP 17, 92262, Fontenay aux Roses, France

    I. Guseva Canu, S. Jacob, S. Caër, J. P. Garsi, M. Tirmarche & D. Laurier

  2. Center for Research in Environmental Epidemiology, Barcelona Biomedical Research Park, Barcelona, Spain

    E. Cardis

  3. Institut National de Recherche et de Sécurité, Service Epidémiologie des Entreprises, Nancy, France

    P. Wild

  4. Etablissement AREVA NC de Pierrelatte, Service Santé au Travail, Pierrelatte, France

    B. Auriol

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  1. I. Guseva Canu
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Correspondence to I. Guseva Canu.

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Guseva Canu, I., Jacob, S., Cardis, E. et al. 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. Cancer Causes Control 22, 1563–1573 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10552-011-9833-5

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