Re: US radiation safety limits not based on science-GAO

[BLHamrick@aol.com]

In a message dated Mon, 17 Jul 2000 11:30:53 AM Eastern Daylight Time, "Otto G. Raabe" <ograabe@ucdavis.edu> writes:

<< At 09:41 AM 7/17/00 -0500, Dave Derenzo wrote:
>Aren't the NRC limits for the public 100 mrem per for most of the 
>population and 500 mrem per year to a small fraction of the 
>population?  Where did the 25 mrem limit come from?  Where in the regs is 
>the EPA limit of 15 mrem found?>>

The NRC limit of 25 mrem in one year is part of the decommissioning rule in 10 CFR 20, Subpart E, and refers to the allowable dose after a facility has been decommissioned and released for unrestricted use.

I'm afraid I don't recall where the EPA limit is recorded.

Barbara L. Hamrick
BLHamrick@aol.com
*******************************************
July 17, 2000
Davis, CA

I believe that the NRC 25 mrem annual limit assumes that a person might
have up to four other exposures per year from other sources, so this limits
the total for such a person to 100 mrem per year.

I believe that he EPA 15 mrem is based on a hypothetical mathematical
calculation of lifetime risk using a the standard LNT model. 15 mrem per
year times 70 years of life is about 1 rem which EPA believes represents a
lifetime cancer risk of one in twenty-thousand.


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