Alice Stewart
From The Encyclopedia of Earth
Stewart, Alice
August 18, 2006, 4:59 pm
March 7, 2011, 9:27 pm
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Alice Stewart (1906-2002), a British physician who first demonstrated the link between exposure to low-intensity radiation and cancer. She headed the Oxford Childhood Cancer Survey, which showed that children who died of leukemia or other cancers had been X-rayed in utero twice as often as healthy children (1958). This controversial finding eventually led to the cessation of X-rays for pregnant women and heightened interest in the health risks of low-level radiation. Stewart also led a study on the health of nuclear workers at a plutonium-manufacturing complex in Hanford, Washington, site of the Manhattan Project. The analysis revealed over 10 times the incidence of cancer predicted from atomic bomb-survivor studies.
