Altogether 22 347 men who participated in the United Kingdom's atmospheric nuclear weapon tests and experimental programmes in Australia and the Pacific Ocean between 1952 and 1967 were identified from the archives of the Ministry of Defence and followed up. Their mortality and incidence of cancer were compared with those in 22 326 matched controls selected from the same archives. The risk of mortality in the participants relative to that in the controls was 1.01 for all causes and 0.96 for all

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... neoplasms. Thirty eight causes of death were examined separately. Significant differences in mortality were found for leukaemia, multiple myeloma, and other injury and poisoning, with higher rates in the participants, and for cancers of the prostate and kidney and chronic bronchitis, with higher rates in the controls. The mortality from leukaemia and multiple myeloma in the participants was slightly greater than would have been expected from national values (standardised mortality ratios of 113 and 111, respectively), but in the controls it was