Double standards. The NRC.

[Steven Dapra <sjd@iolnm.net>]

Oct. 28

RADSAFERs:

	I'm writing about Steven D. Rima's message of 28 Oct about the double
standard for I-131.

	Steven pointed out that "Most NRC and Agreement State licensees are
subject to the 100mrem/y limit for members of the public from their
activities."; but, he continued, "Medical licensees on the other hand, can
now release a patient to the public so long as the _calculated_ dose to a
member of the public is less than 500 mrem, and there is obviously no way
to ever measure or confirm whether this was exceeded.".

	Steven's question was, "Why is there/should there be such a double
standard???"  (His "???")

	Could it be that there is more to this than any so-called safety issue?
An event in New Mexico may be instructive.  For 32 years Interstate Nuclear
Services (INS) operated a laundry to clean clothes that had been exposed to
radioactivity.  After a lengthy battle, Concerned Citizens for Nuclear
Safety (CCNS) finally persuaded the Santa Fe (NM) city council to pass an
ordinance that forced INS to close its laundry in Santa Fe.  Written into
the ordinance was an exception for hospitals and medical professionals
using radionuclides in diagnosis and treatment.  (CCNS's web page can be
viewed at <www.nuclearactive.org>.  An article about the laundry battle and
CCNS detailing some of CCNS's deceitful behavior will be found in Nuclear
News, 7-99; pp. 41-48.)

	The campaign for the new city ordinance was perceived by the local INS
branch as an attempt to force the laundry out of business.  It probably
goes without saying that CCNS is the typical anti-nuclear group, and that
it has also opposed Los Alamos National Laboratories, and the Waste
Isolation Pilot Project (WIPP). 

	Could it be that the campaign against the national laboratories, and
against power reactors, and against irradiation plants are part of a
campaign to destroy the nuclear industry?  But the anti-nukers have a
problem - they can't attack nuclear medicine because of its importance in
diagnosing and treating illnesses; and because to do so would damage their
carefully cultivated image as humanitarians.

	I can't prove anything of course, but it is my belief that government at
all levels is willing to collaborate (passively and actively) with the
anti-nuclear forces in their destructive campaign.  Hence the increasingly
draconian regulatory burden.  But as already noted, there has to be an
exception ("double standard") for hospitals and so forth.  (Nuclear
medicine isn't immune to attack though.  In 1995 an anti-nuclear group in
Albuquerque was opposing the Department of Energy's proposals to operate a
Mo-99 generator at Sandia National Laboratories.)

	So, for what it's worth those are my comments on the double standard.  The
views of certain parties at the EPA can be tied into what I perceive as the
problem of over-regulation, but that message will have to wait a few days.

	Steven Rima also alluded to Dr. (Carol) Marcus' views on the NRC and its
regulation of nuclear medicine. I am unable to address her assessment, but
the NRC asked the NAS to review its regulation of medicine, and for some
comments on the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academy of
Science report "Radiation in Medicine - A Need for Regulatory Reform,"
(released Dec. 14, 1995), see these articles in the Health Physics Society
Newsletter:

24(8):6-7; Aug. 1996 (by Mark H. Selikson, Ph.D., DABR)
24(10):14; Oct. 1996 (by William R. Hendee, Ph.D., CHP)
26(1):5; Jan. 1998 by William R. Hendee, (CHP)

Steven Dapra
Albuquerque, New Mexico

sjd@iolnm.net

	

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