Testing ground for cancer

MAJURO, March 6: Cancer rates in the Marshall Islands linked to fallout from Cold War nuclear tests by the United States have reached e...

MAJURO, March 6: Cancer rates in the Marshall Islands linked to fallout from Cold War nuclear tests by the United States have reached “extreme” levels, according to a study in the journal of the American Cancer Society.

“The cancer incidence in the Marshall Islands is extreme,” said the study in the journal Cancer by a team of scientists led by Neal Palafox of the University of Hawaii John A Burns Medical School.

The comparative study of cancer rates in the US and the Marshall Islands was based on records at the Nuclear Claims Tribunal of 470 Pacific islanders who had died of cancer.

The tribunal is a US-funded agency which compensates islanders with health problems associated with exposure to nuclear test fallout from the 67 US tests at Bikini and Enewetak atolls in the 1940s and 1950s.

The study said that “increases in leukemia, breast cancer and thyroid cancer after radiation exposure have been well established, especially in childhood exposures .”

The scientists, including Majuro’s PublicHealth Director Kennar Briand, analysed cancer rates in the United States compared with the Marshall Islands from 1985 to 1994. “Cancer incidence rates were higher in virtually every category in the Marshall Islands compared with the United States for the period,” their study said.

Lung cancer in the Marshalls was nearly four times more prevalent, cervical cancer rates were nearly six times higher and liver cancer incidence were 15 times higher in males and 40 times higher in females.

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Another risk factor in the Marshall Islands is its high rate of malnutrition and the associated deficiency of Vitamin A, according to the study. A 1994 study of Marshalls children aged from one to five showed that 62 per cent had severe Vitamin A deficiency by World Health Organization standards, the study said. Lack of the vitamin has been “highly associated” with lung, liver, cervical and bladder cancers, it said. “Westernisation of the Marshall Islands brought social problems associated with urbanization andbreakdown of indigenous cultural values,” it added.

“There are high rates of alcohol abuse, smoking and sexually transmitted diseases.” But the true extent of cancer in the Pacific island nation could be grossly higher than reported because of “an underdeveloped health record-keeping system,” the scientists warned. “The data presented here represents a very conservative estimation of the true cancer incidence in the Marshall Islands,” they said.

“The finding of substantially higher cancer incidence rates in the Marshall Islands compared with the US in virtually all categories studied, in view of the aforementioned under-ascertainment of cases, is alarming.”