British Nuclear Test Veterans Association
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Mortality and Morbidity of Members of the British Nuclear Tests Veterans Association and the New Zealand Nuclear Tests Veterans Association and their Families
SUE RABBITT ROFF
University of Dundee Centre for Medical Education
Published in Medicine, Conflict and Survival (Volume 15, Supplement 1, July-September 1999)
Part Four
Mortality and Morbidity in Crews of Two Royal New Zealand Naval Frigates Present for Grapple Tests off Christmas Island 1957-58
Mortality and morbidity studies of particular crews who were in service at US nuclear weapons tests are about to be undertaken for the Operation 'Crossroads' series in response to anxieties raised by surviving crewmembers. This present study reports data from a sample of the 528 men who were in service with the New Zealand Navy, stationed on the frigates HMNZS Pukaki and HMNZS Rotoiti as weather ships in the vicinity of the 1957-58 Grapple series of UK nuclear weapons tests off Christmas Island. More information about New Zealanders' experience of these tests is given in Part 5.
In 1997 Ruth McKenzie, a registered nurse and member of the NZNTVA, distributed a questionnaire to 380 servicemen or their families who are members of the New Zealand Nuclear Tests Veterans Association. The raw data were provided on diskette to the present researcher who is responsible for the coding and the interpretations placed on the results. Roy Sefton, Chairman of the New Zealand Nuclear Tests Veterans Association, was responsible for negotiating the inclusion of the New Zealand data into the present study. Neither of them, however, bears any responsibility for the interpretations placed on the data by the researcher.
Mortality
Responses were received from 235 (62% of the 380 questionnaires; 45% of the 528 servicemen) of whom 97 were from families of deceased veterans (41% of the 235 responses). The NZNTVA have information that a further 48 men are deceased, or 145 (27%) of the 528 servicemen. The responses provided information on causes of death for 73 men, of which 57 were from cancer (78% of deaths for which data are available). In addition to the 57 cancer deaths, the 235 NZNTVA responses reported ten cardiovascular deaths, two deaths from diabetes, and four deaths from strokes, a total of 73 deaths or 31% of the sample of 235 men.
Cancer deaths
Of the fatal cancers, eight were of the lung, five leukaemias, three lymphoma and two multiple myelomas. Fifteen were unspecified. A complete list of the cancers, together with a comparison with two previous surveys of NZ nuclear test veterans, can be obtained from the author.
Other illnesses
The 235 men reported a total of 299 conditions, including 47 cardiovascular, 22 respiratory and 17 gastrointestinal. There were 49 skin, 20 arthritic and 16 other skeletal disorders. Ten reported bilateral cataracts and 18 infertility. A complete list is available from the author.
Conceptions
There were 443 conceptions reported for the 235 men. Of these, 99 (22%) were miscarriages and 16 (3.6%) stillborn; two foetuses were aborted. Of these 117 prenatal and stillborn deaths, a large number were reported as severely deformed. Thus 26.4 % of the conceptions did not result in live births. Eight families accounted for 48 of the miscarriages with 4-9 per family. Of the 324 live born children, two were so severely deformed that they died perinatally and a further 25 children died in early childhood. For the grandchildren, 230 conceptions were reported in this sample, 28 resulted in miscarriages (12.1%) of which half were experienced by three families; two foetuses were aborted, one for anencephaly and the other for gross deformity; there were two perinatal deaths and 198 live births.
Children and grandchildren
Respondents to the survey reported 231 conditions in 324 children, and 66 in 198 grandchildren (full list from author). In the children, there were 33 skin, 29 respiratory, 20 cardiovascular (including congenital heart disease), 14 blood, 20 arthritic and 24 other skeletal disorders. There were two cases of spina bifida. Nine reported infertility. There was one case of leukaemia and four of melanoma.
In the grandchildren, there were 22 respiratory conditions, 13 skeletal disorders and one other case of arthritis, and two cases of spina bifida.
The cancer mortality reported by this sample of 235 men, which is only 44.5% of the full cohort of 528 men, shows an acceleration in the 1990s comparable to that reported in the Death Certificate Study of members of the British Nuclear Tests Veterans Association (Part One). In the full cohort, an incidence of 33 cancer cases with 26 deaths were reported up to 198775 with an incidence of 49 cases and 36 deaths by 1996.76
These studies surveyed the 528 men known to have participated in the tests and a group of 1,504 men who were in the Royal New Zealand Navy during the same period but did not participate in the tests. It is however, possible that these controls, or some of them, may have served at a later time aboard the Royal New Zealand Navy ships that were present at several of the Grapple tests of 1957-58, so could have been subject to residual or induced radiation. Despite making no correction for the Healthy Soldier bias, they reported a relative risk of death from cancer of 1.38 and of the incidence of cancer 1.12 for the test participants. The risk was particularly elevated for the haematological cancers: a 3.25 risk of mortality and 1.94 risk of incidence, with the risk for leukaemia reaching 5.58. The authors noted that three of the leukaemias in the test participants as well as both leukaemias in the controls occurred more than 25 years after the tests, and only one occurred less than 15 years after the tests. The latency period for leukaemia has been conventionally regarded as up to 25 years, although it is noted that longer latency periods have been observed in Hiroshima survivors aged 35 years or less at the time of exposure.
The later study76 showed that the test participants had nearly four times the risk of developing haematological
cancers as the controls by the end of 1992, and their risk of dying from leukaemia or non-Hodgkins lymphoma
was nearly six times that of the controls. It states:
From this further follow-up to the end of 1992, we concluded that the evidence is still consistent that some
haematological cancers (including some leukaemias and some non-Hodgkin's lymphoma) may have
been caused by participation in the nuclear weapons tests programme. However, this further follow-up
strengthens the evidence that there is no increased risk for non-haematological cancers or for causes of
death other than cancer in the test participants.
There is still no correction for the healthy soldier bias.
The SAPHO-type syndrome accounts for at least 4000 of morbidity in all three generations in this New Zealand sample. The incidence of neural defects is far higher than in the study of New Zealand chemical applicators,69 which reported congenital defects and miscarriages among the offspring of 989 New Zealand 2,4,5-T sprayers, including two cases of spina bifida in 2,294 births. The overall birth defect rates were 20 per 1,000 among the chemical applicators and 16 per 1,000 among the agricultural contractors, 'close to those reported in three previous New Zealand studies'. The miscarriage rates for their New Zealand sample were similar for the two groups, with a rare of 86 miscarriages per 1,000 births for the chemical applicators and 93 per 1,000 births for the agricultural contractors. There were three stillbirths reported, or seven per 1,000 live-births, which was lower than the NZ rate for 1969-78 of 8.9 per 1,000.
Ruth McKenzie, the nurse who collected the present data, comments:
An interesting link has been noted between the condition of the father and those problems experienced by
his offspring. A father has cancer and his child may have cancer too. A father who has a skin condition
may well have a heavily birth-marked child or one who has rashes of moles over a whole limb or part of
the body, or who in one case presents with an unusual follicular condition. A father who has an unusual
painful joint condition may have a child suffering exactly the same conditions: 'Just like your father's', says the perplexed doctor. A father who has severe premature ageing (noted in a Russian paper to be a
secondary immune dysfunction) may have a child with an immune dysfunction. A father with a lung
problem can have every descendant suffer with a baffling lung condition 'asthma just like whooping
cough but not whooping cough' which confounds the experts
.
Read Part five