Scott Davis, Ph.D., a member of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center’s Public Health Sciences Division in Seattle, is available to discuss the short- and long-term health effects of exposure to toxic levels of environmental radiation.
He has directed major research activities investigating the effects of ionizing radiation on human health. One is a series of studies in the Russian Federation of the effects of radiation exposure from the Chernobyl Power Station. These studies have focused on the risk of thyroid cancer and leukemia among children in the Bryansk Oblast. The second is a long-term follow up study of thyroid disease in persons exposed to atmospheric releases of radiation from the Hanford Nuclear Site in eastern Washington (the Hanford Thyroid Disease Study). He has conducted several epidemiologic studies of the possible health effects associated with exposure to power frequency magnetic fields, focusing on the risk of leukemia and breast cancer.
Davis is a member of the Hutchinson Center’s Radiation and Environmental Exposure Studies (REES) group, a research unit that studies environmental risk factors for cancer and other diseases. REES studies have been conducted among people in the Seattle area, throughout the U.S. and in the Russian Federation.
Davis, also professor and chairman of the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Washington, leads an international team of researchers that have conducted extensive analysis of thyroid cancer incidence among those who were children at the time of the Chernobyl disaster. He has spent the past two decades studying the health effects of the Chernobyl accident and has made more than 80 trips to the site. For his contributions he became the first foreign epidemiologist elected to the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences.
Research published so far as a result of the work includes a paper that found children with iodine deficiency — a common problem in the region — were more likely to develop thyroid cancer than those who had normal levels of iodine, which suggests that dietary supplementation with iodine could help reduce the risk of thyroid cancer.
Source: Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center