a)
Procedures should be established to have
all thyroid abnormalities reported to a central
file where periodically the effects would be
correlated with dose~level.
Detailed dosimetric
reconstructions should be made for those
individuals developing thyroid abnormalities,
with particular emphasis given to evaluation of
prior X-ray therapy.
In fact,
a retrospective
-
survey should be made to document the prevalence
;
a
of medical irradiation of Utah infants to
determine what effect this might have on the
iodine 131 studies.
Also, new techniques should
be explored for improved estimates of iodine 131
dose (see Appendix).
e)
If the Utah study is to yield maximum
information, it must receive long-term support.
Many years may elapse before the appearance of
delayed effects of irradiation.
If no effects
appear, it will be even more imperative to
document the study extremely thoroughly, because
it is much more difficult to prove that a given
dose is safe than to verify that a higher dose is
dangerous.
However, the establishment of a safe
dose is of much greater importance.
3)
While thyroid cancer has been of major concern
in this paper,
other conditions should be considered,
a study (Starr et. al.) of
such as the more frequent benign thyroid tumors.
In /
74 children and adolescents treated with iodine 131
for hyperthyroidism (an overactive thyroid) and followed
for two ~ fourteen years,
there were five thyroid tumors
of which only one (a papillary adenocarcinoma) was
malignant.??
in a different study,
out of eighteen
children treated with iodine 131 for hyperthyroidisz,
six thyroid tumors were observed five - fourteen years
later.1©
times.
More cases may yet appear after longer follow-up
DOE ARCHIVES
Se