Chernobyl Radiation Damage "Not Passed to Children," According to Study
Victoria Gill
4/24/2021 1:20:41 PM
Victoria Gill wrote this article in BBC:
There is no "additional DNA damage" in children born to parents who were exposed to radiation from the Chernobyl explosion before they were conceived.
This is according to the first study to screen the genes of children whose parents were enlisted to help in the clean-up after the nuclear accident.
Participants, all conceived after the disaster and born between 1987 and 2002, had their whole genomes screened. The study found no mutations that were associated with a parent's exposure.
Prof Gerry Thomas, from Imperial College London, has spent decades studying the biology of cancer, particularly tumours that are linked to damage from radiation. She explained that this new study was the first to demonstrate that "even when people were exposed to relatively high doses of radiation - when compared to background radiation - it had no effect on their future children".
The new study was led by Prof Meredith Yeager, at the US National Cancer Institute (NCI), in Maryland. It focused on the children of workers who were enlisted to help clean up the highly-contaminated zone around the nuclear power plant, and the children of evacuees from the abandoned town of Pripyat, and other settlements within the 70km zone around it.
One of the lead researchers explained that the research team recruited whole families, so the scientists could compare the DNA of a mother, a father and a child.
"We looked at the mothers' and the fathers' genomes and then at the child. And we spent an extra nine months looking for any signal - in the number of these mutations - that was associated with a parents' radiation exposure. We couldn't find anything."
There is no "additional DNA damage" in children born to parents who were exposed to radiation from the Chernobyl explosion before they were conceived.
This is according to the first study to screen the genes of children whose parents were enlisted to help in the clean-up after the nuclear accident.
Participants, all conceived after the disaster and born between 1987 and 2002, had their whole genomes screened. The study found no mutations that were associated with a parent's exposure.
Prof Gerry Thomas, from Imperial College London, has spent decades studying the biology of cancer, particularly tumours that are linked to damage from radiation. She explained that this new study was the first to demonstrate that "even when people were exposed to relatively high doses of radiation - when compared to background radiation - it had no effect on their future children".
The new study was led by Prof Meredith Yeager, at the US National Cancer Institute (NCI), in Maryland. It focused on the children of workers who were enlisted to help clean up the highly-contaminated zone around the nuclear power plant, and the children of evacuees from the abandoned town of Pripyat, and other settlements within the 70km zone around it.
One of the lead researchers explained that the research team recruited whole families, so the scientists could compare the DNA of a mother, a father and a child.
"We looked at the mothers' and the fathers' genomes and then at the child. And we spent an extra nine months looking for any signal - in the number of these mutations - that was associated with a parents' radiation exposure. We couldn't find anything."