ABSTRACT
Historically, very little attention has been paid by US public health officials to collecting data on cancer cases until recently. One means of assessing any effects of proximity to nuclear emissions is to take those plants that opened during the Baby Boom years, and compare cancer death rates before and after the plants were opened. Since Connecticut had no operating nuclear reactors until 1967, there is no opportunity to examine trends in childhood cancer incidence among Baby Boomers living near nuclear plants. Although no state has a cancer registry as old as Connecticut's, the next oldest reflects similar trends in cancer incidence among children. The 1990 National Cancer Institute study provides some data on childhood cancer mortality trends among these Boomers. Traditionally, about 1 of 100,000 American children age 0 to 14, many of them infants and babies, die each year from septicemia.
