Thyroid Cancer Rate Triples In New Jersey, Doubles Nationally Since 1979

[hatrack]

"The thyroid cancer rate in New Jersey has more than tripled since 1979. During the same period, the rate nationally has doubled, and researchers cannot confidently explain either rise.

"We don't know why," said Eddy Bresnitz, the state epidemiologist for the Department of Health and Senior Services. "It's clear that the incidence of thyroid cancer has been steadily increasing for several decades throughout the U.S. for men and women, especially in the northeastern states."

The disease is still rare compared with the most common cancers. Nationally, prostate cancer strikes about 43 times as many men every year, and breast cancer strikes about 12 times as many women. Thyroid cancer is also one of the most curable cancers. However, no cancer diagnosis is growing as fast, according to the National Cancer Institute. And with a scarcity of epidemiological studies on the subject, experts are left to make educated guesses as to the explanation.

While some suggest potential culprits ranging from medical scans, to weapons testing, to toxic chemicals, a favored theory among doctors is that they're just better at finding it. Lawrence Wood, a physician and the head of the Thyroid Foundation of American in Boston, said at a dinner party with 20 people, he could find a thyroid nodule in at least one of them. Technology for screening such nodules for cancer, and treating those that are cancerous, has improved dramatically, Wood said. "I think we're just picking it up more," Wood said.

Brett Moses, a head and neck surgeon in Hamilton who said he operates on about 160 thyroids a year, said many of his patients come in with a tiny "microfocus" of cancer that was inadvertently found during an unrelated scan, and that is best left alone."

EDIT

http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/index.ssf?/base/news-20/1110780687211590.xml

[livetohike]

1. My sister -in-law just had a biopsy of nodules on her thyroid gland

It was "negative". There seems to be many cases of these thyroid problems in the Pittsburgh area. I don't have the stats right now to back up my claim, but I know at least 10 people over the years who have had their thyroid gland removed.

The Pittsburgh area is the site of the first commercial nuclear power plant (Shippingport) and combined with all the industry that used to occur there, I believe that is the reason for the numerous thyroid problems.

[Maestro]

2. Well, well

Last in January of 2004 I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. I was perfectly healthy otherwise. It was not pleasant in that the thyroid cancer also also caused a nasty skin problem called Lichen Simplex Chronicus that took 8 months to completely heal. The thyroid cancer screwed up my metabolism royally. The doctors were at a loss to tell me why it developed. I was not exposed to any known radiation source. The key word there is known. The good thing is that my type of thyroid cancer was relatively benign, but there are more aggressive kinds. I am fine now, I think. ;)

[Throckmorton]

3. A bomb tests in the 50's and 60's.

That gets my vote.

[NNadir]

4. That's certainly possible.

After Chernobyl, thyroid cancers increased by something like 600%. (According to Greenpeace, I think, it jumped by 9,227,465% - ignoring the decimals) and everybody in the Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, Denmark, and certain of the Shetland Islands either has thyroid cancer or is about to develop it.

Of course, it's pretty easy to "jump 600%" if your starting number is say, 50. All you need is for 300 people to get thyroid cancer and you have a very startling headline.

I actually had a very radioactive thyroid for about three years of my career, because I was involved in labeling proteins and other types of molecules with the radioisotope I-125. It was kind of cool in a way, monitoring my thyroid (I ultimately found you really can reduce your activity with iodine supplements), but I will admit that every once in a while, if I have throat pain I sort of worry - and I should certainly know better.

It is widely known that downwinders from nuclear tests did in fact suffer statistically significant higher incidences of thyroid cancer. But again, the risk is still not impressive when compared with other risks, the risk of smoking, the risk of driving an automobile, the risk of skiing, etc. In spite of all the nuclear testing in the region, Utah still has the third highest life expectancy in the US, apparently because its citizens smoke and drink at a far lower rate than most of the rest of the population. They do ski, and their snow is quite impressive for this purpose.

However there are many other etiological explanations for this state of affairs in the state where I live: New Jersey. My favorite explanation for this statistic is the one mentioned in the article: Detection is simply better.

[jpak]

9. The effective half-life of 125I in the human thyroid is ~41 days.

http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/0031-9155/17/3/303

For serious thyroid contamination to persist for many years and require prolonged usage of iodine tablets, there had to have been a series of serious multiple exposures (reportable accidents).

There would have been a huge dose to the thyroid as well.

RSO's and the NRC usually revoke licenses when things like that happen...

[NNadir]

12. First of all, I wasn't "required" to use iodine tablets.

It was my own experiment to take the pills, and I found I could manipulate the intensity of my thyroid's gamma count quite readily. In fact the half-life of physiological radioiodine can be reduced quite readily by taking lots of iodine. Morton iodized salt works; I also took some flaky kelp pills from a health food store, and at other times I took regular vitamins with a healthy dollop of iodine.

Secondly my exposure was not the result of an "accident." It was routine exposure that was a minor hazard of the work I was doing. It was impossible to do that work, which involved a certain amount of chromatography, without absorbing a certain about of I-125. Unreacted I-125 has essentially a zero retention time in most systems; and the elution of NaI-125 gave a good measure of the void volume of the column.

My laboratory was routinely inspected by the government, and by outside health physicists and consultants. There was never any talk about shutting us down. I understood then, just as I understand now, that radiation is a part of life, and that my exposure was marginally higher than some other folks. Every once in a while they'd drive up with this big truck with an elaborately calibrated instrument, but I monitored myself with a hand-held Geiger counter.

I also took responsibility for our waste, which was essentially unreacted iodine and unwanted protein fragments and various chromatography gels. I did this job because many of the people I worked with had worked themselves up into a state of irrational fear of anything that might be considered "nuclear waste." We stored the stuff in drums. After two years of decaying, it was essentially equivalent to background radiation. I know. I used to check it myself. Usually I'd calculate the expected date of decay, give it an extra month, check it and then authorize it for pick-up.

I very much doubt that you have ever been in had an experience involving a radiation license. People who have such licenses and use them and maintain them and people who issue them are all usually people who understand radiation and who do not have an irrational fear of it.

Commercially I-125 RIA test kits are shipped and used all over the world. They are competitive binding tests and they work quite well at determining physiological content of various entities in tissues. They save lives.

[struggle4progress]

13. Dose guidelines for medical prophylaxis have been available for decades.

NEJM Volume 303:1083-1088 November 6, 1980 Number 19
Suppression of thyroid radioiodine uptake by various doses of stable iodide

Abstract

We studied the effect of various doses of sodium iodide on thyroid radioiodine uptake in euthyroid volunteers by giving single doses of 10, 30, 50, and 100 mg and then daily doses of 10, 15, 30, 50, or 100 mg for 12 days thereafter. All single doses above 10 mg suppressed 24-hour thyroid uptake of 123I to 0.7 to 1.5 per cent. Continued daily administration of 15 mg of iodide or more resulted in values consistently below 2 per cent. A small but statistically significant fall in serum thyroxine (T4) and triiodothyronine (T3) and a rise in serum thyrotropin (TSH) concentrations were observed after eight and 12 days of iodide treatment. These data suggest that the thyroid uptake of radioactive iodine can be markedly suppressed by single-dose administration of 30 mg of stable iodide and that suppression can be maintained with daily doses of at least 15 mg. This study provides guidelines for stable iodide prophylaxis in the event of exposure to radioactive iodine.

http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/abstract/303/19/1083

Any competent radiochemical lab would have been aware of this.

[jpak]

14. I've been using radioisotopes since 1977

(14C, 3H, 32P, 55Fe, and 35S) and I use ~30mCi of 3H a year.

I've also been RSO (that's radiation safety officer) on several research cruises and at a number of field sites.

Anyone routinely contaminating themselves (or others) with radioisotopes would not last long at any place I've ever worked at.

I also had a old girlfriend that did iodinations routinely. She was also the only one allowed to work with 125-I and she was terrified of the stuff.

The one time her supervisor let someone else attempt an iodination, the guy seriously contaminated the hood he was working in - and it was a Big Deal.

They had to shut down the lab for a month while it was being decontaminated. They had to seal up the hood, haul it off and everyone in that wing of the building had to get whole-body scans.

Irrational fear of radiation??? No. Just healthy respect and adherence to proper lab safety...

[NNadir]

15. Yeah right.

:eyes:

[struggle4progress]

11. Latency period of thyroid neoplasia after radiation exposure

Ann Surg. 2004 Apr;239(4):536-43

Ann Surg. 2004 Apr;239(4):536-43
Latency period of thyroid neoplasia after radiation exposure
Kikuchi S, Perrier ND, Ituarte P, Siperstein AE, Duh QY, Clark OH.
Department of Surgery, UCSF Affiliated Hospitals, 94143-1674, USA.

... The mean latency period for benign tumors was longer than that for malignant lesions (mean, 34.1 and 28.4 years, P = 0.018; median, 38.0 years and 30.0 years, P = 0.001). Follicular carcinomas developed sooner (mean, 20.5 years; median, 20 years) than did follicular adenomas (mean, 35.3 years; median, 36.5 years; P = 0.003, P = 0.0009). Patients with papillary thyroid cancers presenting as occult papillary cancers (<1 cm) and as a dominant nodule had similar latency periods (mean, 34.0 and 28.0 years P = 0.29; median, 37.5 and 30.5 years, P = 0.09), respectively ...

Latency period might be a bit long for US or Soviet open-air testing ...

[Wilms]

5. I thought they might mention radon as a possible contributor.

Poor New Jersey.

Radon Map:

http://www.epa.gov/radon/zonemap/newjersey.htm


"a granite formation that extends from near Reading in southeastern Pennsylvania, through a wide band of northern New Jersey State (e.g., Morris County), a narrow band in New York State (e.g., Putnam County), and into Connecticut. This whole formation is known to have high uranium content and hence was expected to have radon problems. However, measurements now make it clear that the radon problems are largely confined to the Pennsylvania section plus extreme western New Jersey."

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/nuclear/radon.html


"Indoor radon problems and problems related to radon in drinking-water supplies are generally restricted to the Reading Prong area of northern New Jersey."

http://www.hydrotechno.com/docs/doc8.html


And then there was this little problem...

In New Jersey, Radioactive Cleanup Nears End

Jennifer Hile
National Geographic Channel

July 9, 2004
A New Jersey county is in the last phases of an intensive U.S. Environmental Protection Agency project to remove the radium-contaminated soil upon which homes in several communities were built.

Problems in Essex County began nearly a century ago, when the U.S. Radium Corporation (now defunct) processed radium in the City of Orange Township in the early 1900s.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/07/0709_040709_jerseycleanup.html

-on edit-

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x21013

[NNadir]

6. Radon is generally not associated with thyroid but with the lungs.

It is not even the radon itself that causes the problem but the daughter elements, polonium, radiolead, and radiobismuth, particles of which become lodged in the lungs. None of these elements have a particularly high affinity for the thyroid.

One element in the U-235 decay series (as opposed to the U-238 series), astatine, has a high tendency to get to the thyroid, but the isotope of radon that is its parent, Rn-223, is very short lived and it not a problem in our New Jersey basements.

[Wilms]

10. Hey

Thanks for that. :)

[mdb1954]

7. State Cancer Profiles

Hi everyone,I'm new here.Have been reading the forum for some time and really enjoy the information on here.Here is a web site that shows what type of cancer is on the rise in every state.Take note of the state of Nevada where all of the nuclear testing was done.The cancer death numbers are lower then any state.
I did have another site bookmark that that showed a list of US Nuclear Test done in Nevada from 1946 to 1963 but that site is no longer there.But I did print out that info and kept it.You would not believe how many test they did in those years,It's no wonder there is so much cancer.


State Cancer Profiles

http://statecancerprofiles.cancer.gov/cgi-bin/quickprofiles/profile.pl?29&001

[baby_bear]

8. Thanks, mdb1954

That is a great website.
Welcome to DU!
Check out the Energy and Environment Forum if you are interested in those topics.

b_b