A new Harvard University study has found that cancer risk may increase with proximity to nuclear power plants, including the now shut down Pilgrim station in Manomet.
“We found that living near nuclear power plants increases the risk for cancer,” said Petros Koutrakis, professor of environmental sciences at Harvard’s T. H. Chan School of Public Health and one of the authors of the study.
Researchers organized data on incidence of cancer from 2000 to 2018 collected by the Massachusetts Cancer Registry by zip code.
The researchers estimated that about 20,600 cancer cases in the state, 3.3 percent, could be attributed to living near a nuclear plant. It found that the risk declined in a linear fashion with distance from a plant.
“The risk diminishes slowly,” Koutrakis said.
Koutrakis said that in general, the older people were, the more at risk they were, though there were differences between men and women.
The study found that at 2 kilometers, or 1.25 miles, from a plant, women between the ages of 55 and 64 had a 52 percent greater risk for cancer, women between the ages of 65 and 74 had twice the risk, and women 75 and over had more than two-and-half times the risk.
Men between 55 and 64 had a 97 percent greater risk of cancer, men between 65 and 74 a 75 percent greater risk, and men 75 and over a 63 percent greater risk.
Koutrakis said that there were not enough cases among people younger than 45 to draw any conclusions.
The study found the risk decreased substantially at 5 kilometers, or about 3 miles, and was negligible beyond 30 kilometers, or about 19 miles, from a plant.
“If it was me, I would prefer to be outside the 30-kilometer radius,” Koutrakis said. “But it’s very hard to establish a threshold.”
The study was published in the journal Environmental Health on Dec. 18. The seven plants it looked at were Connecticut Yankee and Millstone in Connecticut, Vermont Yankee, Yankee Rowe in Rowe, Massachusetts, Seabrook Station in New Hampshire, Indian Point in New York, and Pilgrim in Manomet. The plants were selected because they were within 75 miles of at least one Massachusetts zip code.
Yankee Rowe was closed in 1991. Connecticut Yankee stopped operating in 1996. Vermont Yankee was shut down in 2014. Pilgrim stopped operating in 2019. Indian Point closed in 2021.
Millstone and Seabrook continue to operate.
State Sen. Dylan Fernandes, a Democrat whose district includes Plymouth, found vindication in the report.
“Just last month, Holtec told the Plymouth Independent that my efforts to block the discharge of nuclear wastewater into the Plymouth community was a ‘scare tactic’, yet [last] Thursday, the Harvard School of Public Health released a damning report showing clearly that members of our community living around the plant have higher cancer rates,” Fernandes said in an email. “The Harvard study reaffirms the importance of our work.”
Patrick O’Brien, a spokesperson for Holtec Decommissioning International, the company dismantling the Pilgrim site, pushed back on the significance of the research.
“While the Harvard study concludes that cancer risks ‘may’ increase around [nuclear power plants] the reality is that nuclear remains the cleanest baseload power resource in the United States,” said O’Brien in an email. “The reality is that we live in a radioactive world, one in which the annual American receives 600 millirem of dose from manmade and natural sources, like our food, while based on factual and annually reported environmental data available to the public, the dose to someone living near a NPP is annually less than 1 millirem, a tiny fraction of an annual dose.”
Fred Thys can be reached at fred@plymouthindependent.org.