The health effects of the 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear accident are widely, but not universally, agreed to be very low. The American Nuclear Society concluded that average local radiation exposure was equivalent to a chest X-ray, and maximum local exposure equivalent to less than a year's background radiation. The U.S. BEIR report on the Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation states that "[t]he collective dose equivalent resulting from the radioactivity released in the Three Mile Island accident was so low that the estimated number of excess cancer cases to be expected, if any were to occur, would be negligible and undetectable." A variety of epidemiology studies have concluded that the accident has had no observable long term health effects. One dissenting study is "A reevaluation of cancer incidence near the Three Mile Island nuclear plant" by Dr. Steven Wing of the University of North Carolina. In this study, Dr. Wing and his colleagues argue that earlier findings had "logical and methodological problems" and conclude that "cancer incidence, specifically lung cancer and leukemia, increased following the TMI accident in areas estimated to have been in the pathway of radioactive plumes than in other areas."