Thyroid cancer risks after radiation exposure

Radiation is the emission of energy through electromagnetic waves. We get some amount of radiation every time we’re in the sun, and to an extent it’s good for us and helps us out. Radiation is also used in radiation therapy for the treatment of cancer. What happens in radiation therapy is that at high doses, radiation therapy can actually kill cancer cells or slow their growth by damaging their DNA. Radiation therapy is helpful in dealing with cancer cells, but what happens when you don’t have any cancer cells and are exposed to high levels of radiation? It does the same thing but to your normal cells. Ionizing radiation, the radiation that is emitted from nuclear reactors, has mainly one big impact on the human body, which is to weaken and break up DNA enough to cause cell death or mutation that could potentially lead to cancer. This is the type of radiation that is released when nuclear power plant accidents happen like Chernobyl, and Fukushima. So what are the potential effects to the human body, specifically in the long run? An article I found talks about how there could be a risk of thyroid cancer after being exposed to radiation. It compared the risk after the Fukushima nuclear power plant accident and the Chernobyl accident. External exposure to radiation can induce cancer, but so can internal exposure to radioactive iodine which can increase the risk of thyroid cancer. Using Chernobyl as a lesson, countermeasures were put in place to reduce the radioactive ion uptake when Fukushima happened. Following Chernobyl, there was a positive relationship that was found between childhood thyroid cancer occurrence and thyroidal iodine-131internal dose, but the dose response relationship was not easily determined. The actual external exposure in Fukushima was low though because of the shielding effects of the building that people stayed in, so it was difficult to understand the health impairments caused by radiation. Since they were unsure of how much exposure people got in relation to how close they were, they decided to perform ultrasounds of all the children’s thyroid glands. They found that there are very few health effects that were expected but did ultrasounds on 370,000 people 18 years and younger and found suspicious results after the second examination. They have been able to detect it better after Fukushima thought. Overall, there is a risk of getting thyroid cancer, but the risks were greater after Chernobyl than after Fukushima since they got better at detecting it and were better prepared for what to do when Fukushima happened.   

Reference:

Yamashita, S., Takamura, N., Ohtsuru, A., & Suzuki, S. (2016). Radiation exposure and thyroid cancer risk after the Fukushima nuclear power plant accident in comparison with the chernobyl accident. Radiation Protection Dosimetry, 171(1), 41–46. https://doi.org/10.1093/rpd/ncw189