Environment
Low-dose radiation raises heart disease risk too
By David Liu, Ph. D.
Mar 5, 2008 - 3:37:05 PM

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WEDNESDAY MARCH 5, 2008 (Foodconsumer.org) -- Most people only know that radiation increases risk of cancer.  Actually it raises risk for heart disease as well in people who are exposed to a low-dose for a long term or to a high dose for a short term, according to a study published Tuesday in the International Journal of Epidemiology.

Early studies showed that short-term exposure to a large dose of radiation increases the risk of heart disease, but the current study shows that long term exposure to a lose dose is also harmful to the heart.

The current study involved 65,000 workers employed between 1946 and 2002 at four nuclear sites operated by British Nuclear Fuels plc and its predecessors.

Steve Jones at Westlakes Scientific Consulting and colleagues looked at the non-cancer death rates and cumulative radiation exposure using the worker's personal dosimeter badges and found those exposed to relatively higher doses were at higher risk for heart disease.

The increased heart risk was equivalent to the effect that makes one to die one year earlier, according to the researchers.  And the risk increased with the level of radiation exposure. High risk was found among those who worked before the 1980s when safety was enhanced.

The researchers found the highest exposure in the study group was about 10 to 20 percent of what the Japanese atomic bomb survivors were exposed to.  Many studies involving the atomic bomb survivors in Japan have already showed radiation increases heart disease risk, Dudley Goodhead, a radiation expert at British Medical Research Council was cited by Reuters as saying.

"The findings of the present study clearly suggest that even chronic exposure to radiation, spread over long periods of time such as received by some radiation workers in the past, may also be able to cause increased heart disease," he was quoted as saying.

Radiation raising heart disease is not news for those who have ever paid attention to the adverse effects of radiation.  John Gofman, a famous nuclear physician who found that 75 percent of breast cancer cases were linked to exposure to medical x-ray, also said much earlier that radiation damages blood vessels, causing heart disease.