Report of Epidemiologic Analyses Performed for Rocky Flats Production Workers Employed Between 1952-1989

ABSTRACT We identified a cohort of 16,303 production era workers employed at theRocky Flats Plant for six months or more between 1952 and 1989, for whom weassembled data on dates of birth and hire, and vital status. For this cohort, wecorrected data for annual external penetrating radiation doses, assembled datafor systemic deposition of plutonium-239 and -240 and, with a job exposurematrix, estimated exposures to asbestos and nine toxic chemicals. Standardizedmortality ratios (SMRs) for the production era cohort were significantly lower thanexpected for all causes of death and all deaths with cancer as an underlyingcause. Elevated SMRs were noted for cancers of the stomach, rectum, brainand other central nervous system sites, connective and other soft tissue, as wellas for unspecified neoplasms of the nervous system and unspecified anemias. The SMR for lung cancer was not elevated. Only the elevated SMR forunspecified neoplasms of the nervous system was statistically significant(