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First mortality analysis in the French cohort of uranium millers (F-Millers), period 1968–2013

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Abstract

Purpose

Epidemiological studies in cohorts of uranium millers can be informative to improve knowledge of the health effects of uranium, but are very rare. The aim of this study was to analyze, for the first time, mortality in a French cohort of uranium millers.

Methods

The F-Millers cohort includes permanent contract workers employed at least 6 months at French uranium milling plants. Vital status and causes of death were obtained from national registries between 1968 and 2013, in order to perform comparisons with French national and local mortality rates by computing standardized mortality ratios (SMRs) with 95% confidence intervals (95% CI).

Results

The cohort includes 1291 workers. The average duration of follow-up is 32.1 years. At the end of follow-up, 448 workers were deceased and 13 lost to follow-up. We observed a significant deficit of mortality for all causes combined when the national reference was considered (SMR 0.81; 95% CI [0.74;0.89]), but no significant difference when the local reference was considered (SMR 0.97; 95% CI [0.88;1.07]). Significant excesses were observed only in a subgroup of 552 workers hired at the manufacturing unit, mainly when the local reference was considered.

Conclusion

No significant excess of mortality was observed at the scale of the full cohort. The cause-specific excesses of mortality observed in the subgroup of workers hired at the manufacturing unit were based on small number of cases, but would warrant further investigations. Undertaking analytical studies and combined analyses of cohorts of uranium millers would help to study the influence of potential risk factors and obtain more precise results.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank all the persons who contributed to the construction of the cohort, especially the AREVA personnel at Bessines-sur-Gartempes who provided work history records. They also thank Pierre-Christian Guiollard and Sylvain Bernhard for providing precious information on the historical context, exposure, and monitoring conditions in French milling plants and Astrid Andres for the data entry in the database. Last, the authors would like to thank Roula Ajrouche (IRSN) who helped them to produce the maps included in this article.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut de Radioprotection et de Sûreté Nucléaire, Laboratoire d’épidémiologie des Rayonnements Ionisants, PSE-SANTE/SESANE/LEPID, BP17, 92260, Fontenay-aux-Roses, France

    Ségolène Bouet, Eric Samson, Dominique Laurier & Olivier Laurent

  2. Amplexor, Montigny-le-Bretonneux, France

    Iris Jovanovic

Authors
  1. Ségolène Bouet
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  2. Eric Samson
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  3. Iris Jovanovic
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  4. Dominique Laurier
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  5. Olivier Laurent
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Contributions

SB performed the analysis and wrote the article. ES launched the study, obtained the necessary permissions, ensured data management, and contributed to the writing of the manuscript. IJ collected the data, partly computerized them to build the database, and conducted data validation. SB, DL and OL contributed to the design of the study and the interpretation of the results. OL supervised the analyses and the writing of the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Olivier Laurent.

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Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Funding

This work was jointly funded by the IRSN and AREVA (bilateral collaborative agreement in epidemiology research), with partial financial support from the European Commission (EURATOM FP7 Grant no. 249689; DoReMi CURE Project).

Ethics approval

French Data Protection Authority (CNIL)—Agreement no. DR-2012-611.

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Bouet, S., Samson, E., Jovanovic, I. et al. First mortality analysis in the French cohort of uranium millers (F-Millers), period 1968–2013. Int Arch Occup Environ Health 91, 23–33 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00420-017-1254-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00420-017-1254-7

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