International Projects

Marshall Islands
CDC received a request from the Republic of the Marshall Islands to conduct an epidemiologic study of thyroid disease in the Marshall Islands. If conducted, such a study would be the first at tempt to conduct a nationwide assessment in the Marshall Islands of the relationship between thyroid disease and radiation exposures from U.S. nuclear weapons tests in the 1940s and 1950s. To date, a draft protocol for an epidemiologic study has been developed. An important component of this proposed study is to first determine the radiation doses to people who lived throughout the atolls during the weapons testing period of the 1940s and 1950s.

Note: The proposed Marshall Islands epidemiologic study would be the first nationwide evaluation of both thyroid neoplasia and estimated radiation exposure from all nuclear weapons tests conducted in the Marshall Islands.

Studies in the Former Soviet Union
CDC routinely provides technical assistance and expert consultation to ongoing dose reconstruction and epidemiologic studies of the effects of exposure to radionuclides released from nuclear facilities in the former Soviet Union. CDC works with other U.S. and international agencies to determine analytic studies of interest. CDC has also cooperated with the International Atomic Energy Agency and other interested countries on dose-reconstruction model-validation studies based on environmental data collected in the aftermath of the Chernobyl event in 1986. The purpose of this project is to use these data to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of various environmental transport and dosimetry models that may be useful in dose reconstruction.

International Data Sets for Use in Testing
Environmental Transport Models
This collection includes a number of environmental data sets that have become available through environmental monitoring and dose reconstruction activities at various sites throughout the world. The purpose of the collection is to assure the long-term availability of high-quality data sets for use in development and testing of environmental transport models, especially those used in dose reconstruction activities. The present collection includes data sets previously used in model validation exercises; several additional data sets from the former Soviet Union that have not been previously used in test exercises will be made available at a later date.