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

["ruth_weiner" <ruth_weiner@email.msn.com>]

The 25 mrem limit was first put into regulation (I think) for the Waste
Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) and was the initial standard for the HLW
repository.  Around 1993, the EPA went to 15 mrem for the repository.  The 4
mrem was in response to a lawsuit brought against the WIPP because of
inconsistencies in EPA's groundwater standards.

Ruth Weiner
ruth_weiner@msn.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Otto G. Raabe <ograabe@ucdavis.edu>
To: Multiple recipients of list <radsafe@romulus.ehs.uiuc.edu>
Date: Monday, July 17, 2000 9:30 AM
Subject: Re: US radiation safety limits not based on science-GAO


>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?
>*******************************************
>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.
>
>Otto
>
> *****************************************************
> Prof. Otto G. Raabe, Ph.D., CHP
> Institute of Toxicology & Environmental Health (ITEH)
> (Street Address: Bldg. 3792, Old Davis Road)
> University of California, Davis, CA 95616
> E-Mail: ograabe@ucdavis.edu
> Phone:(530) 752-7754, FAX:(530) 758-6140
> *****************************************************
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