Non-cancer thyroid diseases among children in the Kaluga and Bryansk regions of the Russian Federation exposed to radiation following the Chernobyl accident.

This paper presents results of estimated radiation risks of non-cancer thyroid diseases in the people from Kaluga and Bryansk regions of the Russian Federation exposed in their childhood to radioiodine as a result of the Chernobyl accident. This work was carried out under the Joint Medical Research Project on non-cancer thyroid diseases conducted by Sasakawa Memorial Health Foundation and the Medical Radiological Research Center of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences. The subjects were 2,457 people who underwent health examinations from 1997 to the end of 1999 who had individual radiometric thyroid data obtained between May and June 1986 and were aged 10 y or less at the time of exposure. The thyroid absorbed doses from incorporated 131I were estimated on the basis of measurements of exposure dose rate in the vicinity of the subject's thyroid and liver. A compartment model accounting for 131I metabolism in humans and cows was used. The estimated dose varied from 0 to 6 Gy, and its distribution was approximately lognormal with a mean of 0.132 Gy and standard deviation of 0.45 Gy. The prevalence of diffuse goiter in males showed a significant dose-response (p = 0.03) with an estimated odds ratio 1.36 at 1 Gy.