Journal article
Sarin exposure, mortality and cancer incidence in UK military veterans involved in human experiments at Porton Down: 52-year follow-up
- Abstract:
-
Objectives We investigated whether UK military personnel exposed to sarin during the ‘Service Volunteer Programme’ at Porton Down had increased rates of mortality or cancer incidence over a 52-year follow-up.
Methods A historical cohort study assembled from UK military records, comprising male veterans exposed to sarin during the ‘Service Volunteer Programme’ at Porton Down, UK (n=2975) and a comparison group of similar veterans who did not attend (n=2919). Mortality and cancer incidence data were obtained from national registries up to December 2019. Analysis was conducted using Cox regression adjusted for age, year of birth and service characteristics.
Results Over a median follow-up of 52.2 years (range 2 days to 74.6 years), 1598 (53.7%) sarin-exposed veterans and 1583 (54.3%) non-exposed veterans died. Adjusted HRs for all-cause mortality were raised for any sarin exposure (HR=1.08, 95% CI 1.01 to 1.16), two or more exposures (HR=1.25, 95% CI 1.04 to 1.49) and higher doses (air >15 mg.min/m3) (HR=1.15, 95% CI 1.02 to 1.30). For cause-specific mortality, sarin exposure was associated with deaths from ‘other’ circulatory diseases (excludes ischaemic and cerebrovascular diseases) (HR=1.41, 95% CI 1.06 to 1.87) and alcohol-attributable deaths (HR=2.66, 95% CI 1.40 to 5.07). There was no association between sarin exposure and overall cancer incidence (HR=1.01, 95% CI 0.93 to 1.10), but cancer incidence was higher for alcohol-related neoplasms (HR=1.24, 95% CI 1.01 to 1.51).
Conclusions Sarin exposure was associated with increased rates of mortality over a 50-year follow-up. The strongest associations were observed for deaths attributable to alcohol and ‘other’ circulatory diseases.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
Actions
Access Document
- Files:
-
-
(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 303.8KB, Terms of use)
-
- Publisher copy:
- 10.1136/oemed-2024-109525
Authors
- Funder identifier:
- https://ror.org/03x94j517
- Grant:
- MR/R002932/1
- Publisher:
- BMJ Publishing Group
- Journal:
- Occupational and Environmental Medicine More from this journal
- Volume:
- 81
- Issue:
- 9
- Pages:
- 480-488
- Place of publication:
- England
- Publication date:
- 2024-09-30
- Acceptance date:
- 2024-09-04
- DOI:
- EISSN:
-
1470-7926
- ISSN:
-
1351-0711
- Pmid:
-
39349046
- Language:
-
English
- Pubs id:
-
2036145
- Local pid:
-
pubs:2036145
- Deposit date:
-
2024-11-05
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Archer et al
- Copyright date:
- 2024
- Rights statement:
- © Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2024. Re-use permitted under CC BY. Published by BMJ. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to copy, redistribute, remix, transform and build upon this work for any purpose, provided the original work is properly cited, a link to the licence is given, and indication of whether changes were made.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
If you are the owner of this record, you can report an update to it here: Report update to this record