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Joan Stephenson, PhD

JAMA. 2002;287:1255.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

Inherited germline mutation rates in people living near a Kazakhstan nuclear test site roughly doubled due to radioactive fallout from nuclear weapons tests carried out in the late 1940s to early 1950s, according to an international team of researchers from the United Kingdom, Kazakhstan, and Finland (Science. 2002;295:1037).

Investigators collected blood samples from 40 three-generation families living around the Semipalatinsk test site, the focus of 470 nuclear weapons tests by the former Soviet Union during a 40-year period. Blood samples were also collected from a control group of 28 three-generation families living in a similar noncontaminated rural area in Kazakhstan.

Most of the exposure of people living near the test site was attributed to radioactive fallout from just four surface explosions that took place there in 1949, 1951, 1953, and 1956. The researchers found a nearly two-fold increase in the germline mutation rate for the . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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