Analysis of correlation between cancer incidence among residents of some Russian administrative divisions and exposure to natural radiation or artificial radiation from nuclear facilities

This paper presents an analysis of cancer incidence registered in 2016 in Russia. The cases under study are members of the public exposed to natural radiation or man-made radiation from Rosatom nuclear facilities. Analysis is based on data on cancer incidence and mortality of the Russian National Statistics, Unified System of Individual Dose Control (USIDC) and radiation-hygiene passports of organizations. Poisson distribution model was used for research. Estimates of the radiation associated risk of cancer among children and adolescents aged 0-17 years and the population of areas under study as a whole was assessed. The calculated radiation risk is negative in the majority of scenarios of exposure to radiation of the study population stratified by sex, it means that the cancer risk is lower at the higher radiation dose. One of the causes of the negative correlation between dose and risk may be significant variation in the number of reported cancer cases across administrative divisions, this is because registered cancer incidence rates among children and adolescents resided in different regions differ by a factor of 2 or 3. All subjects of Federation were ranked according to the cancer prevalence and compared with the rates in Russia as a whole. The ranking results are presented in cartographic form. Because the analysis does not take into account social and environmental cancer risk factors, the results of analysis can be considered as approximated. However, obtained data may be helpful in working out the methodology for environmental studies.