AW: [ RadSafe ] dose RATE is the decisive variable

[John Jacobus]

For "In the '90s DOE "turned over" responsibility for
the research to NIOSH . . . ," read no funding.

For "NIOSH, which 'decided' that this was 'very low
priority research,' read no funding. 

--- "Muckerheide, Jim  (CDA)"
<Jim.Muckerheide at state.ma.us> wrote:

> Hi Otto,
> 
> I would also appreciate any of your papers that you
> have available in electronic form.
> 
> Note, e.g., the human data for dose rates in Gy/d in
> your '96 paper:
>
http://www.radscihealth.org/rsh/Figures/1-2/4/1/Raabe_96_F30-7.GIF
> 
> 
> Also, below, your ref to HPJ 1983, Vol 44, is "Vol
> 44, Supplement 1" :-)
> 
> 
> (All, This ref is a 590-page proceedings of the Oct
> 1981 Int'l Conf in Lake Geneva WI, on "Radiobiology
> of Radium and the Actinides in Man."  
> 
> This was the beginning-of-the-end of the Argonne
> Center for Human Rdiobiology (CHR) program to
> monitor health effects of people with radium
> ingestion, primarily the radium dial painters. This
> progrram was started when Robley Evans retired from
> MIT in 1970.  It was led by by Bob Rowland.  
> 
> The CHR program collected the data from the various
> US studies into one program; and it was chartered to
> identify and include additional cases who had
> ingested radium or worked in the radium industries,
> or ingested radium for medical or health purposes.  
> 
> The program was intended to be for the lifetime of
> the radium-exposed population, as with the a-bomb
> survivors, but it was a population that had
> long-term, and much greater, doses than the a-bomb
> survivors.  This group was much more relevant to
> assessing chronic and fractionated low-dose-rate
> exposures for regulations for exposure of workers,
> medically-exposed patients and others.  (As stated
> by an RERF research scientist at the 1997 IAEA
> Seville Conference, the dose response of the a-bomb
> survivors only applies to people potentially exposed
> to nuclear weapons, direct, essentially
> instantaneous, mixed very high energy neutron and
> gamma radiation.)
> 
> However, the CHR program was terminated, starting in
> 1983 by stopping the recruitment of new cases, and
> later ('86?) stopping the medical followup of people
> in the program.  The results were already indicating
> that the radium-exposed population would have better
> health and longevity than unexposed people to become
> statistically significant if DOE allowed the number
> of cases to continue to increase, and body-burdens
> established - there were a little less than 2,000
> measured out of about 4,000 that the CHR group had
> aggressively and successfully recruited.  (Note:
> Evans' MIT program had had about 600 cases in 1970,
> with smaller numbers in the NJ and IL cohorts as the
> more substantial centers before CHR had gotten
> serious about finding radium-burdened cases,
> including exhumations - though such cases were not
> epidemiologically valid.)
> 
> In the '90s DOE "turned over" responsibility for the
> research to NIOSH, which 'decided' that this was
> 'very low priority research,' because 'workers would
> never again be exposed to such radium doses.' :-)
> 
> Regards, Jim
> 
> 

+++++++++++++++++++
May we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion. 
Dwight D. Eisenhower  

-- John
John Jacobus, MS
Certified Health Physicist
e-mail:  crispy_bird at yahoo.com

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