[ RadSafe ] Makhijani picocuries (IEER letter to EPA)

[James Salsman]

Thank goodness someone is asking the EPA to recognize the
reproductive toxicities of heavy metal radionuclides.  I
still have trouble believing that they have been known for
more than half a century now without being incorporated into
any of the NRC, EPA, or OSHA regulations.  Ordinary people
on the street where I live overwhelmingly report, 5-to-1,
that they know that uranium and plutonium cause mutations
and increased incidence of birth defects.  If the
teratogenicity of radioactive heavy metals is so deeply
ingrained in common knowledge, then why don't any
regulations reflect it at all?  It would be such a bad and
unfunny parody if it weren't reality -- so bizarre!

The full text of the report is at:
   http://www.ieer.org/reports/badtothebone/VI.html

I hope that many more people will sign on to their letter at:
   http://www.ieer.org/reports/badtothebone/endorsements.html

They cite the A.C. Miller et al. Armed Forces Radiobiology
Research Institute study in Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry,
vol. 91 (2002), pp. 246–252, but it is unclear whether IEER
directly cites the very similar, "Plutonium-catalyzed
oxidative DNA damage in the absence of significant alpha-
particle decay," by H.G. Clayclamp and D. Luo in Radiation
Research, vol. 137 (1994), pp. 114-117, which states, "Using
... 242Pu ... chemical generation of hydroxyl radicals was
expected to exceed the radiolytic generation by one hundred
thousand-fold." --
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=8265780

Sincerely,
James Salsman

> NUCLEAR NEWS FLASHES - Wednesday, August 3, 2005
> U.S. NEWS:
> --AN IEER REPORT SAYS EPA SHOULD SET STRICTER STANDARDS FOR RADIONUCLIDES in
> 
> drinking water. The federally allowed levels of drinking water 
> contamination by plutonium-239, an atomic bomb ingredient, and 
> other radioactive materials with similar properties are 100 
> times too high, according to the report released today the 
> Institute for Energy & Environmental Research (IEER), an 
> antinuclear environmental group. The maximum contaminant levels 
> (MCLs), now part of the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) 
> Safe Drinking Water Act, were based on obsolete 1950s science, 
> said Arjun Makhijani, IEER president and author of the report. 
> EPA is scheduled to review the MCLs next year. IEER said EPA 
> should reduce the MCLs for all alpha-emitting, long-lived 
> transuranic radionuclides, combined, by 100 times to a level 
> of 0.15 picocuries per liter. The report is on the IEER Web 
> site (http://www.ieer.org).