Board on Radiation Effects Research – författare

The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) was set up by Congress in 1990 to compensate people who have been diagnosed with specified cancers and chronic diseases that could have resulted from exposure to nuclear-weapons tests at various U.S. test sites. Eligible claimants include civilian onsite participants, downwinders who lived in areas currently designated by RECA, and uranium workers and ore transporters who meet specified residence or exposure criteria. The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), which oversees the screening, education, and referral services program for RECA populations, asked the National Academies to review its program and assess whether new scientific information could be used to improve its program and determine if additional populations or geographic areas should be covered under RECA. The report recommends Congress should establish a new science-based process using a method called "probability of causation/assigned share" (PC/AS) to determine eligibility for compensation. Because fallout may have been higher for people outside RECA-designated areas, the new PC/AS process should apply to all residents of the continental US, Alaska, Hawaii, and overseas US territories who have been diagnosed with specific RECA-compensable diseases and who may have been exposed, even in utero, to radiation from U.S. nuclear-weapons testing fallout. However, because the risks of radiation-induced disease are generally low at the exposure levels of concern in RECA populations, in most cases it is unlikely that exposure to radioactive fallout was a substantial contributing cause of cancer.

Radioactive iodines are produced during the operation of nuclear power plants andduring the detonation of nuclear weapons. In the event of a radiation incident,radioiodine is one of the contaminants that could be released into the environment.Exposure to radioiodine can lead to radiation injury to the thyroid, including thyroidcancer. Radiation to the thyroid from radioiodine can be limited by taking a nonradioactiveiodine (stable iodine) such as potassium iodide. This book assesses strategiesfor the distribution and administration of potassium iodide (KI) in the event of anuclear incident. The report says that potassium iodide pills should be available toeveryone age 40 or younger—especially children and pregnant and lactatingwomen—living near a nuclear power plant. States and municipalities should decidehow to stockpile, distribute, and administer potassium iodide tablets, and federalagencies should keep a backup supply of tablets and be prepared to distribute themto affected areas.

From 1945 through 1962, the US atmospheric nuclear weapons testing program involved hundreds of thousands of military and civilian personnel, and some of them were exposed to ionizing radiation. Veterans'' groups have since been concerned that their members'' health was affected by radiation exposure associated with participation in nuclear tests and have pressured Congress for disability compensation. Several pieces of legislation have been passed to compensate both military and civilian personnel for such health effects. Veterans'' concerns about the accuracy of reconstructed doses prompted Congress to have the General Accounting Office (GAO) review the dose reconstruction program used to estimate exposure. The GAO study concluded that dose reconstruction is a valid method of estimating radiation dose and could be used as the basis of compensation. It also recommended an independent review of the dose reconstruction program. The result of that recommendation was a congressional mandate that the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), a part of the Department of Defense, ask the National Research Council to conduct an independent review of the dose reconstruction program. In response to that request, the National Research Council established the Committee to Review the Dose Reconstruction Program of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency in the Board on Radiation Effects Research (BRER).

The committee randomly selected sample records of doses that had been reconstructed by DTRA and carefully evaluated them. The committee''s report describes its findings and provides responses to many of the questions that have been raised by the veterans.

This book describes the current situation, the gamma-ray dosimetry, and such dosimetry issues as thermal-neutron discrepancies between measurement and calculation at various distances in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It recommends approaches to bring those issues to closure and sets the stage for the recently convened U.S. and Japan Working Groups that will develop a new dosimetry for RERF.

The book outlines the changes relating to DS86 in the past 15 years, such as improved numbers that go into, and are part of, more sophisticated calculations for determining the radiations from bombs that reach certain distances in air, and encourages incorporation of the changes into a revised dosimetry system.

In 1986, officials of the US Department of Energy revealed that the Hanford Atomic Products Operations in Richland, Washington, had been releasing radioactive material, in particular iodine-131, into the environment over a period of years. This information, which confirmed the suspicions of some people in the Pacific Northwest about what they called the Hanford Reservation or just Hanford, created quite a stir. Both the US Congress and citizens of the Northwest became keenly interested in knowing whether these radiation releases had caused human health effects. They were particularly concerned about whether Hanford releases of iodine-131 had led to an increase in thyroid disease among the population of the area.

In 1988, Congress ordered a study of the human health effects of exposure to the iodine-131 released from Hanford. Funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the study was carried out by the Seattle-based Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center over the last decade. The study examined estimate of exposure of the thyroid and rates of thyroid disease because iodine-131 concentrates in the thyroid and that organ would be the best indicator of radiation damage in the population. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) asked the National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council (NAS-NRC) to give an independent appraisal of the study methodology, results, and interpretation and of the communication of the study results to the public.

Review of the Hanford Thyroid Disease Study Draft Final Report constitutes the response of the NRC subcommittee to that request. To respond to the charge, the NRC subcommittee felt that it needed to go beyond the specific questions addressed to it by CDC and develop a broad understanding and critique of the HTDS and the Draft Final Report. As part of those activities, the subcommittee solicited comments from outside experts and members of the public primarily in a public meeting held in Spokane, Washington, in June 1999, where 14 scientists and members of the public made formal presentations to the subcommittee about various aspects of the Draft Final Report. Other members of the public also spoke during four open-comment sessions at the meeting. In addition, efforts were made to evaluate all information materials prepared for the public and additional CDC communication plans. Information was gathered through interviews with journalists, members of concerned citizen groups in the Hanford region, members of the CDC scientific and media staff in Atlanta, and the HTDS investigators.

In this summary, the main points follow the structure of our report and are presented under several headings: epidemiologic and clinical methods and data collection, dosimetry, statistical analyses, statistical power and interpretation of the study, and communication of the study results to the public. We then provide a brief synopsis of our response to the questions raised by CDC.

The Safe Drinking Water Act directs the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate the quality of drinking water, including its concentration of radon, an acknowledged carcinogen.

This book presents a valuable synthesis of information about the total inhalation and ingestion risks posed by radon in public drinking water, including comprehensive reviews of data on the transfer of radon from water to indoor air and on outdoor levels of radon in the United States. It also presents a new analysis of a biokinetic model developed to determine the risks posed by ingestion of radon and reviews inhalation risks and the carcinogenesis process. The volume includes scenarios for quantifying the reduction in health risk that might be achieved by a program to reduce public exposure to radon.

Risk Assessment of Radon in Drinking Water, reflecting research and analysis mandated by 1996 amendments to the Safe Drinking Water Act, provides comment on a variety of methods to reduce radon entry into homes and to reduce the concentrations of radon in indoor air and in water. The models, analysis, and reviews of literature contained in this book are intended to provide information that EPA will need to set a new maximum contaminant level, as it is required to do in 2000.

During the 1950s, with the Cold War looming, military planners sought to know more about how to keep fighting forces fit and capable in the harsh Alaskan environment. In 1956 and 1957, the U.S. Air Force''s former Arctic Aeromedical Laboratory conducted a study of the role of the thyroid in human acclimatization to cold. To measure thyroid function under various conditions, the researchers administered a radioactive medical trace, Iodine-131, to Alaska Natives and white military personnel; based on the study results, the researchers determined that the thyroid did not play a significant role in human acclimatization to cold.

When this study of thyroid function was revisited at a 1993 conference on the Cold War legacy in the Arctic, serious questions were raised about the appropriateness of the activity—whether it posed risks to the people involved and whether the research had been conducted within the bounds of accepted guidelines for research using human participants. In particular, there was concern over the relatively large proportion of Alaska Natives used as subjects and whether they understood the nature of the study. This book evaluates the research in detail, looking at both the possible health effects of Iodine-131 administration in humans and the ethics of human subjects research. This book presents conclusions and recommendations and is a significant addition to the nation''s current reevaluation of human radiation experiments conducted during the Cold War.

PAVE PAWS is a phased-array warning system designed to detect and track sea-launched and intercontinental ballistic missiles operated on Cape Cod since 1979 by the U.S. Air Force Space Command. In 1979, the National Research Council issued two reports to address concerns from Cape Cod residents about the safety and possible health effects of the radiofrequency energy from the radar. Following up on the1979 report, the new report finds no evidence of adverse health effects to Cape Cod residents from long-term exposure to the PAVE PAWS radar. The report specifically investigated whether the PAVE PAWS radar might be responsible in part for the reported higher rates of certain cancers in the area, but concludes there is no increase in the total number of cancers or in specific cancers of the prostate, breast, lung, or colon due to radiation exposure from PAVE PAWS. The report did find in the scientific literature a few biological responses to radiofrequency exposures that were statistically significant. Such responses do not necessarily result in adverse health effects, but the report recommends additional studies to better discern the significance, if any, of those findings.

The National Research Council''s Committee on the Impact of Low-Level Radioactive Waste Management Policy on Biomedical Research in the United States was called on to assess the effects of the low-level radioactive waste management policy on the current and future activities of biomedical research. This report provides an assessment of the effects of the current management policy for low-level radioactive waste (LLRW), and resulting consequences, such as higher LLRW disposal costs and onsite storage of LLRW, on the current and future activities of biomedical research. That assessment will include evaluating the effects that the lack of facilities and disposal capacity, and rules of disposal facilities, have on institutions conducting medical and biological research and on hospitals where radioisotopes are used for the diagnosis and treatment of disease.

The National Research Council was asked by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to review the draft report of the National Cancer Institute (NCI)-CDC''s working group charged with revising the 1985 radioepidemiological tables. To this end, a subcommittee was formed consisting of members of the Council''s Committee on an Assessment of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Radiation Programs and other experts. The original tables were mandated under Public Law 97-414 (the "Orphan Drug Act") and were intended to provide a means of estimating the probability that a person who developed any of a series of radiation-related cancers, developed the cancer as a result of a specific radiation dose received before the onset of the cancer. The mandate included a provision for periodic updating of the tables. The motivation for the current revision reflects the availability of new data, especially on cancer incidence, and new methods of analysis, and the need for a more thorough treatment of uncertainty in the estimates than was attempted in the original tables.

This book describes the current situation, the gamma-ray dosimetry, and such dosimetry issues as thermal-neutron discrepancies between measurement and calculation at various distances in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It recommends approaches to bring those issues to closure and sets the stage for the recently convened U.S. and Japan Working Groups that will develop a new dosimetry for RERF.

The book outlines the changes relating to DS86 in the past 15 years, such as improved numbers that go into, and are part of, more sophisticated calculations for determining the radiations from bombs that reach certain distances in air, and encourages incorporation of the changes into a revised dosimetry system.

From 1945 through 1962, the US atmospheric nuclear weapons testing program involved hundreds of thousands of military and civilian personnel, and some of them were exposed to ionizing radiation. Veterans'' groups have since been concerned that their members'' health was affected by radiation exposure associated with participation in nuclear tests and have pressured Congress for disability compensation. Several pieces of legislation have been passed to compensate both military and civilian personnel for such health effects. Veterans'' concerns about the accuracy of reconstructed doses prompted Congress to have the General Accounting Office (GAO) review the dose reconstruction program used to estimate exposure. The GAO study concluded that dose reconstruction is a valid method of estimating radiation dose and could be used as the basis of compensation. It also recommended an independent review of the dose reconstruction program. The result of that recommendation was a congressional mandate that the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), a part of the Department of Defense, ask the National Research Council to conduct an independent review of the dose reconstruction program. In response to that request, the National Research Council established the Committee to Review the Dose Reconstruction Program of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency in the Board on Radiation Effects Research (BRER).

The committee randomly selected sample records of doses that had been reconstructed by DTRA and carefully evaluated them. The committee''s report describes its findings and provides responses to many of the questions that have been raised by the veterans.

Radon progeny—the decay products of radon gas—are a well-recognized cause of lung cancer in miners working underground. When radon was found to be a ubiquitous indoor air pollutant, however, it raised a more widespread alarm for public health.

To develop appropriate public policy for indoor radon, decisionmakers need a characterization of the risk of radon exposure across the range of exposures people actually receive. In response, the BEIR VI committee has developed a mathematical model for the lung cancer risk associated with radon, incorporating the latest information from epidemiology and scientific studies.

In this book the committee provides a fresh assessment of exposure-dose relationships. The volume discusses key issues—such as the weight of biological evidence and extrapolation from radon-exposed miners to the larger population—in estimating the risk posed by indoor radon. It also addresses such uncertainties as the combined effects of smoking and radon and the impact of the rate of exposure.

The committee considered the entire body of evidence on radon and lung cancer, integrating findings from epidemiological studies with evidence from animal experiments and other lines of laboratory investigation. The conclusions will be important to policymakers and environmental advocates, while the technical findings will be of interest to environmental scientists and engineers.

The Safe Drinking Water Act directs the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate the quality of drinking water, including its concentration of radon, an acknowledged carcinogen.

This book presents a valuable synthesis of information about the total inhalation and ingestion risks posed by radon in public drinking water, including comprehensive reviews of data on the transfer of radon from water to indoor air and on outdoor levels of radon in the United States. It also presents a new analysis of a biokinetic model developed to determine the risks posed by ingestion of radon and reviews inhalation risks and the carcinogenesis process. The volume includes scenarios for quantifying the reduction in health risk that might be achieved by a program to reduce public exposure to radon.

Risk Assessment of Radon in Drinking Water, reflecting research and analysis mandated by 1996 amendments to the Safe Drinking Water Act, provides comment on a variety of methods to reduce radon entry into homes and to reduce the concentrations of radon in indoor air and in water. The models, analysis, and reviews of literature contained in this book are intended to provide information that EPA will need to set a new maximum contaminant level, as it is required to do in 2000.

Radioactive iodines are produced during the operation of nuclear power plants andduring the detonation of nuclear weapons. In the event of a radiation incident,radioiodine is one of the contaminants that could be released into the environment.Exposure to radioiodine can lead to radiation injury to the thyroid, including thyroidcancer. Radiation to the thyroid from radioiodine can be limited by taking a nonradioactiveiodine (stable iodine) such as potassium iodide. This book assesses strategiesfor the distribution and administration of potassium iodide (KI) in the event of anuclear incident. The report says that potassium iodide pills should be available toeveryone age 40 or younger—especially children and pregnant and lactatingwomen—living near a nuclear power plant. States and municipalities should decidehow to stockpile, distribute, and administer potassium iodide tablets, and federalagencies should keep a backup supply of tablets and be prepared to distribute themto affected areas.

PAVE PAWS is a phased-array warning system designed to detect and track sea-launched and intercontinental ballistic missiles operated on Cape Cod since 1979 by the U.S. Air Force Space Command. In 1979, the National Research Council issued two reports to address concerns from Cape Cod residents about the safety and possible health effects of the radiofrequency energy from the radar. Following up on the1979 report, the new report finds no evidence of adverse health effects to Cape Cod residents from long-term exposure to the PAVE PAWS radar. The report specifically investigated whether the PAVE PAWS radar might be responsible in part for the reported higher rates of certain cancers in the area, but concludes there is no increase in the total number of cancers or in specific cancers of the prostate, breast, lung, or colon due to radiation exposure from PAVE PAWS. The report did find in the scientific literature a few biological responses to radiofrequency exposures that were statistically significant. Such responses do not necessarily result in adverse health effects, but the report recommends additional studies to better discern the significance, if any, of those findings.

The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) was set up by Congress in 1990 to compensate people who have been diagnosed with specified cancers and chronic diseases that could have resulted from exposure to nuclear-weapons tests at various U.S. test sites. Eligible claimants include civilian onsite participants, downwinders who lived in areas currently designated by RECA, and uranium workers and ore transporters who meet specified residence or exposure criteria. The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), which oversees the screening, education, and referral services program for RECA populations, asked the National Academies to review its program and assess whether new scientific information could be used to improve its program and determine if additional populations or geographic areas should be covered under RECA. The report recommends Congress should establish a new science-based process using a method called "probability of causation/assigned share" (PC/AS) to determine eligibility for compensation. Because fallout may have been higher for people outside RECA-designated areas, the new PC/AS process should apply to all residents of the continental US, Alaska, Hawaii, and overseas US territories who have been diagnosed with specific RECA-compensable diseases and who may have been exposed, even in utero, to radiation from U.S. nuclear-weapons testing fallout. However, because the risks of radiation-induced disease are generally low at the exposure levels of concern in RECA populations, in most cases it is unlikely that exposure to radioactive fallout was a substantial contributing cause of cancer.

The National Research Council was asked by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to review the draft report of the National Cancer Institute (NCI)-CDC''s working group charged with revising the 1985 radioepidemiological tables. To this end, a subcommittee was formed consisting of members of the Council''s Committee on an Assessment of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Radiation Programs and other experts. The original tables were mandated under Public Law 97-414 (the "Orphan Drug Act") and were intended to provide a means of estimating the probability that a person who developed any of a series of radiation-related cancers, developed the cancer as a result of a specific radiation dose received before the onset of the cancer. The mandate included a provision for periodic updating of the tables. The motivation for the current revision reflects the availability of new data, especially on cancer incidence, and new methods of analysis, and the need for a more thorough treatment of uncertainty in the estimates than was attempted in the original tables.

The National Research Council''s Committee on the Impact of Low-Level Radioactive Waste Management Policy on Biomedical Research in the United States was called on to assess the effects of the low-level radioactive waste management policy on the current and future activities of biomedical research. This report provides an assessment of the effects of the current management policy for low-level radioactive waste (LLRW), and resulting consequences, such as higher LLRW disposal costs and onsite storage of LLRW, on the current and future activities of biomedical research. That assessment will include evaluating the effects that the lack of facilities and disposal capacity, and rules of disposal facilities, have on institutions conducting medical and biological research and on hospitals where radioisotopes are used for the diagnosis and treatment of disease.

In 1986, officials of the US Department of Energy revealed that the Hanford Atomic Products Operations in Richland, Washington, had been releasing radioactive material, in particular iodine-131, into the environment over a period of years. This information, which confirmed the suspicions of some people in the Pacific Northwest about what they called the Hanford Reservation or just Hanford, created quite a stir. Both the US Congress and citizens of the Northwest became keenly interested in knowing whether these radiation releases had caused human health effects. They were particularly concerned about whether Hanford releases of iodine-131 had led to an increase in thyroid disease among the population of the area.

In 1988, Congress ordered a study of the human health effects of exposure to the iodine-131 released from Hanford. Funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the study was carried out by the Seattle-based Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center over the last decade. The study examined estimate of exposure of the thyroid and rates of thyroid disease because iodine-131 concentrates in the thyroid and that organ would be the best indicator of radiation damage in the population. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) asked the National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council (NAS-NRC) to give an independent appraisal of the study methodology, results, and interpretation and of the communication of the study results to the public.

Review of the Hanford Thyroid Disease Study Draft Final Report constitutes the response of the NRC subcommittee to that request. To respond to the charge, the NRC subcommittee felt that it needed to go beyond the specific questions addressed to it by CDC and develop a broad understanding and critique of the HTDS and the Draft Final Report. As part of those activities, the subcommittee solicited comments from outside experts and members of the public primarily in a public meeting held in Spokane, Washington, in June 1999, where 14 scientists and members of the public made formal presentations to the subcommittee about various aspects of the Draft Final Report. Other members of the public also spoke during four open-comment sessions at the meeting. In addition, efforts were made to evaluate all information materials prepared for the public and additional CDC communication plans. Information was gathered through interviews with journalists, members of concerned citizen groups in the Hanford region, members of the CDC scientific and media staff in Atlanta, and the HTDS investigators.

In this summary, the main points follow the structure of our report and are presented under several headings: epidemiologic and clinical methods and data collection, dosimetry, statistical analyses, statistical power and interpretation of the study, and communication of the study results to the public. We then provide a brief synopsis of our response to the questions raised by CDC.

Studies of underground miners have provided a wealth of data about the risk of lung cancer from exposure to radon''s progeny elements, but the application of the miner data to the home environment is not straightforward.

In Comparative Dosimetry of Radon in Mines and Homes, an expert committee uses a new dosimetric model to extrapolate to the home environment the risk relationships found in the miner studies. Important new scaling factors are developed for applying risk estimates based on miner data to men, women, and children in domestic environments. The book includes discussions of radon dosimetry and the uncertainties concerning other risk factors such as age and smoking habits.

The book also contains a thorough technical discussion of the characteristics of radioactive aerosols in domestic environments, the dose of inhaled radon progeny to different age groups, identification of respiratory tract cells at the greatest risk of carcinogenesis, and a complete description of the new lung dose model being developed by the International Commission on Radiological Protection as modified by this committee.

During the 1950s, with the Cold War looming, military planners sought to know more about how to keep fighting forces fit and capable in the harsh Alaskan environment. In 1956 and 1957, the U.S. Air Force''s former Arctic Aeromedical Laboratory conducted a study of the role of the thyroid in human acclimatization to cold. To measure thyroid function under various conditions, the researchers administered a radioactive medical trace, Iodine-131, to Alaska Natives and white military personnel; based on the study results, the researchers determined that the thyroid did not play a significant role in human acclimatization to cold.

When this study of thyroid function was revisited at a 1993 conference on the Cold War legacy in the Arctic, serious questions were raised about the appropriateness of the activity—whether it posed risks to the people involved and whether the research had been conducted within the bounds of accepted guidelines for research using human participants. In particular, there was concern over the relatively large proportion of Alaska Natives used as subjects and whether they understood the nature of the study. This book evaluates the research in detail, looking at both the possible health effects of Iodine-131 administration in humans and the ethics of human subjects research. This book presents conclusions and recommendations and is a significant addition to the nation''s current reevaluation of human radiation experiments conducted during the Cold War.

Written at the request of the U.S. Air Force and Congress, this book evaluates the potential health effects associated with deployment of the Ground Wave Emergency Network (GWEN), a communications system to be used in case of a high-altitude detonation of a nuclear device.

The committee, composed of experts in biophysics, physics, risk assessment, epidemiology, and cancer, examines data from laboratory and epidemiologic studies of effects from electromagnetic fields to determine the likelihood of health effects being caused by the operation of a fully implemented GWEN system.