German uranium miner study - Historical background and available histopathological material

public were documented as early as 1168 in the ore mountains (Erzgebirge) o f Saxony. Silver, bismuth, cobalt, nickel and tungsten were mined from then up to the end of the 19th century. After the Second World War, the Soviet Occupation Authorities reopened the old silver mines in Saxony to mine uran ium for the Soviet nuclear industry. About 400,000 workers produced a total of 220,000 tons of uranium during the years 1946 to 1990. After the reunif ication of Germany, the archive of the Institute of Pathology of the mining area was opened for research. It contains protocols of 28,975 autopsy case s and about 400,000 slides collected from 1957 to 1992, about 66,000 tissue blacks, and 238 whole lungs. From the autopsy cases, 17,466 could be ident ified as workers of the uranium mining company. The remainder of the cases were in the population of the mining area. A comparison of the frequencies of malignancies of male workers older than 15 years with those of the popul ation of the mining area for the years 1957 to 1989 demonstrates a signific antly higher percentage of lung cancer among the uranium miners. There was no significant difference for other solid cancers and leukemias. (C) 1999 b y Radiation Research Society.