There is no evidence to support the view that there is an increased risk of childhood leukemia and other cancers in the vicinity of nuclear power plants in Great Britain. This is the overall conclusion of the UK's Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment (COMARE) in its recently published report. The Committee was set up in 1985 to assess and advise the UK Government on the health effects of natural and man-made radiation and to assess the adequacy of the available data and the need for further research. This report—its fourteenth—was prompted partly by reports of a statistically significantly increased risk of leukemia among children aged less than 5 years living within 5 km of nuclear power plants in Germany [the Kinderkrebs in der Umgebung von Kernkraftwerken (KiKK) study].
By far the largest section (Chapter 4) in the present report is a discussion of the findings of...