Leukaemia risk for kids living near petrol stops

Leukaemia risk for kids living near petrol stops


12:33 19 August 04

NewScientist.com news service

Children who live next to a petrol station are four times more likely to develop acute leukaemia than other children in the same area, suggests new research.

The small study, carried out at four sites in France, looked at 280 children with leukaemia and a control group of 285 children, all younger than 15 years. The children’s mothers were given a questionnaire relating to their lifestyle.

The researchers found that children living next door to a petrol station or automotive garage had a quadrupled risk of leukaemia. And the risk of developing acute non-lymphoblastic leukaemia was seven times greater compared with children who lived in the same area, but not next to a petrol station.

“I was very surprised that living near a petrol station had such a high risk,” says Jacqueline Clavel from the National Institute of Health and Medical Research in Villejuif, France, who led the study.

“The longer the child had lived in the vicinity of the petrol station, the higher their relative risk was. Prenatal exposure also raised the relative risk.”


Rubber factory


Clavel suspects benzene in petrol caused the rise in cancer risk, although she says further studies need to be done.




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National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM), France

Cancer Research UK

Occupational and Environmental Medicine




“The link between benzene and leukaemia has been shown for workers in a rubber factory, but the benzene levels are very high in that instance. Exposure to benzene is much lower for children near a petrol station, so it was surprising,” she told New Scientist.

Richard McNally, from Cancer Research UK's paediatric and familial cancer research group, says that while the findings are interesting, they should be treated with caution. “The study examined a relatively small number of leukaemia cases, and the fact that it was based on interviews leaves it open to influences such as inaccuracy in the recollections of the mothers interviewed,” he says.

Although it is the most common childhood cancer in the western world, acute leukaemia is rare, with four new cases per 100,000 children each year. The majority of cases occur in two-year-old infants, but more than 80 per cent of children make a full recovery.

Journal reference: Occupational and Environmental Medicine (vol 61, p 773)


Gaia Vince

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