ML20008D882
| ML20008D882 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Crane  |
| Issue date: | 10/06/1980 |
| From: | Snyder B Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation |
| To: | Bird W AFFILIATION NOT ASSIGNED |
| Shared Package | |
| ML20008D883 | List: |
| References | |
| NUDOCS 8010230431 | |
| Download: ML20008D882 (2) | |
Text
[h $ A g Jcl 0 CDT C 1980 Mr. William H. Bird Muncy School District West Penn Street Muncy, Pennsylvania 17756
Dear Mr. Bird:
Your letter to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Middletown about the effects of low-level radiation was referred to me for response. I regret that this answer has been delayed. The accident at Three Mile Island and its consequences l
have created a substantial increase in the agency's workload, which has prevented me from responding to you as promptly as I would have liked.
For more than four decades, the.effect of radiation on men and animals has been thoroughly studied. Numerous major biological research programs (including studies of genetic effects) have been completed and others are in progress, all of which have been well documented. While the relationship between ionizing radiation dose and adverse biological effects among humans is not precisely known for all levels of radiation, the principal uncertainty exists at very low l
i dose levels where natural sources of radiation and the variations in these l
sources are comparable to other doses. The most important biological effects l
that radiation can cause are cancer, hereditary diseases, miscarriages..and abnormalities that may occur to a fetus. These effects are identical to those that occur among humans from other causes.
It is this last point in combination with other complicating factors--such as magnitude and variations (1) in normal i
incidence of diseases, (2) in doses from natural radiation sources, (3) in radiation doses from man-made sources other than the nuclear industry, and (4) in exposures to nonnuclear cancer-producing agents--that is responsible
.for much of the uncertainty in the dose-risk relationship at low dose levels.
In l_ieu of precise knowledge of the relationship between low-level radiation and biological effects, radiation experts assume that ionizing radiation has
, c an effect on the human body that remains directly proportienal to the dose, even at very low levels, and that there is therefore no threshold below which -
l radiation can be ignored. They thereforc assume that any dose of radiation, no matter how low, may be harmful.
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. 6 Mr. Uilliam H. Bird 007 t 3M i
Several federal agencies' principally the Environmental Protection Agency, the l
Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and the Nuclear Regulatory Com-
. mission, are responsible for regulating exposures from radiation or radioactive l
material.- In'all cases, the staffs of these agencies set regulations to limit radiation exposures to those well' below nationally and internationally accepted levels of radiation protection.
Thank you for your kind offer of help.
Sincerely, x
Be aard J. Snyder, Program Director Three Mile Island Program Office Office of Muclear Reactor Regulation l
DISTRIBUTION Docket 50-289
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