Radiation workers and their health: national study
The national registry for radiation workers (NRRW) is a long-term follow-up study of the health of radiation workers in the UK.
Documents
Details
Summary
The National Registry for Radiation Workers (NRRW) is a long-term study of ionising radiation workers that investigates if there is any difference in the pattern of diseases among these workers that can be linked to their occupational radiation exposure.
The aim of the study is to provide direct evidence about whether the UK radiation protection regulations appropriately protect workers and to inform the setting of future regulations.
Background
In 1976, the National Radiological Protection Board (now part of UK Health Security Agency) set up the NRRW. The NRRW collects information about radiation workers, in particular on their radiation exposures but also other factors that affect disease risk. It also collects information on cancer incidences and deaths among the workers.
The NRRW now includes over 270,000 individuals who started radiation work from 1955 to the present day and are or were employed in a wide range of employer organisations in the nuclear industry, the Ministry of Defence as well as a number of smaller organisations on the research and industrial sectors. Once recruited we follow workers until their death (unless they choose to opt out).
Aims
The aim of the NRRW is to investigate the effects of long-term occupational exposure to radiation on the health of workers and assess whether radiation protection regulations provide an adequate level of protection for UK radiation workers.
This is done in 2 ways:
- by comparing the health of the workers to the general population
- by investigating if a relationship can be seen between workers radiation doses and their cause of death or the rates of cancer incidence among them.
The NRRW is still adding new members, and your employer has agreed to support the study as one way of demonstrating its commitment to protecting its workers.
More detailed information about the NRRW study guidance, publications and GDPR compliant Privacy Notice for the study can be found on this page. You can contact the team on radiationworkerepidemiology@ukhsa.gov.uk to request more information.
Updates to this page
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Updated the details section.
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Updated 'NRRW data: publications by study team' to include: 'Update to the NRRW third analysis 2025 – non-melanoma skin cancer: basal and squamous cell carcinomas'.
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Added the "Pilot study to evaluate the value of occupational health data to improve the quality of the estimate of health effects from radiation exposure in the NRRW".
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Updated NRRW data: publications by study team to include the summary of shape of radiation dose response for ischaemic heart disease mortality.
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Added 'Merger of the BNFL, UKAEA and AWE worker epidemiology studies into NRRW' and 'INWORKS2: an update to the INWORKS study'.
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Added 'Summary of radiation effect on respiratory disease mortality' to 'NRRW data: publications by study team'.
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Added link to the National Registry for Radiation Workers Governance Group.
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Added summary for 'Update to the NRRW third analysis 2022 – solid cancer incidence' to 'NRRW data: publications by study team'.
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Updated information and added: NRRW data: publications by study team.
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Amended phone number for data controller.
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Added 'INWORKS: collaborative study using NRRW data' and an 'Update to the NRRW third analysis 2019 - leukaemia'.
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Added link to PHE's personal information charter to the privacy notice for National Registry for Radiation Workers.
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Added update to the NRRW third analysis 2019.
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Updated 'National Registry for Radiation Workers: guidance'.
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Renamed and updated the 'information sheet' as guidance.
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Added 'privacy notice for National Registry for Radiation Workers (NRRW)'.
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First published.