Ananova:
Nuclear
link to Down's Syndrome cluster dismissed
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_115128.html
A report has ruled out a link between radioactive fall-out from a fire at the Sellafield nuclear installation in 1957 and Down's Syndrome births among women who were pupils at a school in the Irish Republic at the time of the incident.
The Down's Syndrome births in and around Dundalk, Co Louth, which lies directly across the Irish Sea from Sellafield, have been a controversial issue over a number of years because claims of a link with nuclear contamination.
The report has been published after a five-year study by Dr Geoffrey Dean, former director of the Medical Social Research Board.
He said: "There is no question that there was a cluster of Down's syndrome births, and it was a surprising cluster.
"But there is also no evidence that it was related to the fire at Windscale as Sellafield was called at the time of the blaze.
"The cluster was due to some unknown factor, such as a possible infection that we do not know about which may have hit the school.
"I do not exclude some cause that we have not yet found. But it seems extremely unlikely to have been due to a 'flu epedemic that had hit the town or the Windscale fire."
Dr Dean's findings have been immediately disputed, however, by Dundalk GP Dr Mary Grehan, a leading anti-Sellafield campaigner.
She said: "It is an absolute whitewash of the link with the fire that has already been suggested."
Last
updated: 16:36 Monday 13th November 2000
Kochupillai N, Verma IC, Grewal MS, Ramalingaswani V. Down's syndrome and related abnormalies in an area of high background radiation in coastal Kerala. Nature 1976; 262:60-1.
Strigini P, Sansone R, Carobgi S. Radiation and Down's syndrome. Nature 1990; 347:717.
