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Abstract:
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Much of the emerging information in A-bomb survivor studies necessarily pertains to those exposed as children. Age-time patterns of their radiation-related cancer rates may shed light on basic mechanisms of carcinogenesis. Radiation cancer risks persist for all of lifetime, although with decreasing relative risk since the added mutations are a diminishing fraction of somatic accumulations. Effects of exposure-age on excess cancer risks have long been of primary interest. However, this involves difficult issues, namely a complicated sort of confounding with secular trends in baseline cancer rates. Resolution of this hinges on whether factors causing the secular trends act multiplicatively or additively with radiation, which will depend on the cancer type. On another matter, it appears that there may be greater upward curvature in the dose response for those exposed as children.
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