Re: Radioactive Waste Disposal; direct charge

[Joshua.W.Hamilton@Dartmouth.EDU (Joshua W. Hamilton)]

Regarding: direct costs and radioactive waste disposal

     Yes, our investigators our encouraged to list radioactive and
biohazardous waste disposal as a direct cost (under Other Expenses) on their
NIH and other grants, since there are certain direct costs that are passed on
directly to the investigator for disposal of waste.  We charge individual
labs on a volume basis for disposal of scintillation vials, bags of dry
waste, carcasses, etc., so these are direct costs in addition to the indirect
costs of the Radiation Safety Program itself which might be considered
overhead.  Unfortunately, these requested funds are being increasingly
reduced by NIH as part of its overall trimming of grant budgets to stretch
their diminishing dollars.  This means that the investigator is once again
caught in the middle.  The Federal and State governments mandate certain
regulations, and the institution must implement them but then passes the
costs along to the investigator.  However, the investigator has an
increasingly difficult time getting either the institution or the funding
agencies to pay for these mandates, even though they must be done to carry
out the research in accordance with the law.  This has become a growing
problem for research institutions and their investigators not only for
radiation safety but also in the chemical hygeine, occupational sfaety and
animal welfare arenas.

Josh Hamilton
Dartmouth