Donor Health: Impact of whole blood donation on the blood donor health

Blood donors, by donating whole blood, on average become a low-iron-store population. A whole blood donation draws on average 250 mg of iron. The removal of erythrocytes lowers the potentially carcinogenic iron stores from the body. One could hypothesize that the lowering of these iron stores may reduce the risk of malignancies among the whole blood donors (and also among very frequent plasma donors).