On behalf of 15,000 nuclear workers, Prospect National Secretary Mike Graham said:
"While the health and safety of our members working in the nuclear industry is of paramount importance, we must guard against sensationalist reaction to this report, particularly as the authors themselves acknowledge the study has not established a cause and effect relationship between occupational exposure and heart disease.
"The association identified in the study is purely statistical and does not take into account traditional risk factors for circulatory disease such as smoking, obesity, cholesterol levels and other occupational factors such as workplace stress or the effects of shift work.
"In fact, our members have taken some comfort from the finding that generally nuclear workers in the study had lower mortality rates than the local general population; that the overall mortality of exposed workers was no different from workers who had not been exposed; and that socio-economic status had more bearing on the mortality rate of the cohort than any levels of radiation exposure."
But on the basis of the findings, Graham said the union will now be pushing for a range of actions including:
- Approaching employers and the NDA to fund further studies (the present report has been under the ownership and funding of the NDA since 2006).
- A review into whether non-cancer circulatory diseases should be added to the coverage of the industry’s Radiation Linked Compensation Scheme for nuclear workers.
- Ensuring all employers provide full information to nuclear workers across the industry. This is particularly important to the thousands of contractors who work at Sellafield and other nuclear sites, who may not be covered by Sellafield Ltd’s communications plans.