Errors and blunders in the estimation of radiation exposure for the uranium miners of WISMUT in Germany

Our plain-English summary of Errors and blunders in the estimation of radiation exposure for the uranium miners of WISMUT in Germany, by G.G. Eigenwillig (Health Physics, 2006).

The study

• Author: G.G. Eigenwillig
• Journal: Health Physics
• Published: 2006;91(4):390-1; author reply 392
• Type of article: Letter, Comment
• Cited by: 1 article, as counted by NIH iCite
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher

In plain English

This item is a letter to the editor with a reply, not a research study, and it concerns radiation in uranium mining rather than asbestos. The letter's author criticized the job-exposure matrix (a table estimating exposure by workplace and year) used in a 2006 study of lung cancer among former WISMUT uranium miners in Germany. The author stated that the version used (JEM-2) was unpublished and relied on mean values. The author also stated that it did not consider local radon peaks, breakdowns or drinking of mine water, and that it assigned wrong data to some mining 'objects'. For example, exposure in object 02 shafts appeared to fall from 340 WLM in 1958 to 35 WLM in 1959. The study's authors replied that they used shaft-level, yearly data. Recalculating with the letter author's values for object 09 for 1946 to 1957, they reported an excess odds ratio of 0.06 per 100 WLM (95% CI 0.03 to 0.11), against 0.10 per 100 WLM (95% CI 0.05 to 0.17) originally. They concluded that JEM-2 is a fair approximation of the real situation.

We wrote this plain-English summary from the full article with the help of AI, and a second AI model checked each sentence against the article. It is not the authors' wording; the abstract and the article are their own account.

What the study did and found

• Design: Letter to the editor (correspondence) criticizing the exposure estimates of a published study, followed by the study authors' reply
• Who was studied: Former uranium miners of the WISMUT company in Germany, as studied in Brüske-Hohlfeld et al. 2006; the letter focuses on mining objects 02, 03 and 09. The reply states the study covered 1946 to 1990.
• Exposure: Radiation exposure from radon and radon decay products in uranium mining, expressed in WLM, as estimated by two job-exposure matrices (JEM-1 and JEM-2)
• Main results:
  • The letter's author stated that the study used the still-unpublished JEM-2, not a slightly modified JEM-1 as the paper said
  • The letter's author stated that the exposure values used were mean values
  • The letter's author stated that drinking of mine water until the mid-1950s, and the resulting intake of radionuclides, was neglected
  • The letter's author stated that JEM-2 took 1946 to 1948 exposure data for object 09 from other objects (11 and 21)
  • The letter's author stated that, because object 02 was merged into object 09, exposure in object 02 shafts appeared to fall from 340 WLM in 1958 to 35 WLM in 1959, which the author called faulty
  • The study authors replied that they used JEM-2 data for shafts and groups of shafts, not only mean values
  • The study authors replied that drinking mine water was not a drawback for their study because inhalation, not ingestion, is the relevant route for lung cancer
  • Recalculated with the letter author's suggested WLM levels for object 09 for 1946 to 1957, the excess odds ratio for lung cancer was 0.06 per 100 WLM (95% CI 0.03 to 0.11), compared with 0.10 per 100 WLM (95% CI 0.05 to 0.17) in the original study
• The authors' conclusion: The letter's author concluded that both JEM-1 and JEM-2 contain errors and blunders. In reply, the study authors stated they were not convinced of serious errors that would question their findings, and called JEM-2 a fair approximation of the real situation.
• Limitations the authors state:
  • The study authors acknowledged that a job-exposure matrix is not as valid as individual measurements
  • The study authors acknowledged that troubles and breakdowns could not be incorporated
  • The study authors acknowledged that early exposure reconstruction was limited by a long lag time and by the absence of exposure data until 1955

Topics

The National Library of Medicine indexes this study under subjects our site covers: Lung cancer.

Related studies

• Serum levels of pantropic p53 protein and EGF-receptor, and detection of anti-p53 antibodies in former uranium miners (SDAG Wismut) — J. Schneider, P. Presek, et al. (1999)
• A Monte Carlo t Test to Evaluate Mesothelioma and Radiation in the US Transuranium and Uranium Registries — J.Y. Zhou, S.L. McComish, et al. (2019)
• Analyses of radiation and mesothelioma in the US Transuranium and Uranium Registries — H. Gibb, K. Fulcher, et al. (2013)
• Comparative assessing for radiological, chemical, and physical exposures at the French uranium conversion plant: Is uranium the only stressor? — I. Guseva Canu, F. Paquet, et al. (2009)
• French cohort of the uranium processing workers: mortality pattern after 30-year follow-up — I. Guseva Canu, E. Cardis, et al. (2010)
• Exposure assessment for a cohort of workers at a former uranium processing facility — J.L. Anderson, R.D. Daniels, et al. (2012)

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