TMI - 1997 WING STUDY SHOWED HIGH LUNG CANCERS AND LEUKEMIA IN PLUME'S PATH

Tony Wesolowsky (freelance writer based in Prague), "Low Exposure, High Risk; E.U. study finds radiation riskier than previously thought", In These Times, June 9, 2003

The world's other known nuclear melt-down took place at Three Mile Island in central Pennsylvania in 1979. A frequently cited study conducted by Columbia University in 1990 concluded that the accident had caused no ill effects on the exposed population. Other scientists disagree. Steve Wing, an epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina School of Public Health, found in 1997 that people living closer to the path of the escaping radiation cloud developed all cancer types more frequently, especially lung cancer and leukemia.

Among the 20,000 people who lived near the plant and close to the plume's path, lung cancer and leukemia rates were two or more times higher than what they were near the plant and upwind from the plume, according to Wing's study. Among those in the most direct path of the plumes, lung cancer incidence was elevated by 300 percent to 400 percent, and leukemia rates were up by 600 percent to 700 percent.