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A new World Health Organization report released Thursday warns that infants who were in the Japanese region most affected by radiation following the tsunami in 2011 have a slightly higher risk of getting some form of cancer during their lifetime.

The 168-page report cautions that baby girls that were living in Fukushima, the affected region, have the greatest relative risk increase with around 70 percent likely to get thyroid cancer. However, thyroid cancer is extremely rare, and is one of the most treatable cancers when caught early, and the normal lifetime risk of developing it is about 0.75 percent. That risk would be half of one percentage point higher for women who got the highest radiation doses when they were babies.

Meanwhile, male infants exposed at the highest level - between 12 and 25 millisieverts - face a 7 percent relative risk increase in the lifetime risk of leukemia and that female infants have about a 6% increase in the lifetime risk of breast cancer. Fukushima is a rural agricultural area about 150 miles (240 kilometers) north of Tokyo.

The data, broken down by age, sex, and proximity to the nuclear plant, "show a higher cancer risk for those located in the most contaminated parts," according to Dr. Maria Neira, director of the agency's department of public health and the environment.

But outside those regions, she said in a statement, "no observable increases in cancer incidence are expected."

Researchers looked at a variety of cancers based on estimates of how much radiation people at the epicenter of the nuclear disaster received, namely those directly under the plumes of radiation in the most affected communities.

"These are pretty small proportional increases," said Richard Wakeford of the University of Manchester, one of the authors of the report.

"The additional risk is quite small and will probably be hidden by the noise of other (cancer) risks like people's lifestyle choices and statistical fluctuations," he said. "It's more important not to start smoking than having been in Fukushima."