Category: Radiation

Over 100 Groups Call on EPA to Withdraw Dramatically Weakened Radiation Guides

Over 100 environmental organizations have called on U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA) Administrator Gina McCarthy to withdraw EPA’s controversial new Protective Action
Guides (PAGs), which would allow exposure to very high doses from radiation releases before
government would take action to protect the public.

The PAGs are intended to guide the response to nuclear power reactor accidents (like Fukushima
in Japan, Chernobyl in Ukraine and Three Mile Island in the U.S.), “dirty bomb” explosions,
radioactive releases from nuclear fuel and weapons facilities, nuclear transportation accidents,
and all other radioactive releases.

Although official estimates of health risks from radiation have gone …

CBG and Other Groups File Suit to Block Plutonium Building Disposal in Unlicensed Dumps

The Committee to Bridge the Gap has released a 114 page study by Daniel Hirsch and Ethan Miska disclosing that the California Department of Toxic Substances Control and the Department of Public Health have been approving–without environmental review or opportunity for public comment–proposals by the Boeing Company to demolish radioactive structures at the Santa Susana Field Lab (SSFL).  SSFL is the site of a long-secret partial nuclear meltdown CBG revealed in 1979, and there is widespread contamination from decades of other accidents, spills and releases.  The CBG study shows that Boeing’s own measurements indicate radioactive contamination in the structures torn …

EPA Dramatically Weakens Radiation Protections

EPA has just issued (April 15, 2013) new Protective Action Guides (PAGs) for dealing with radioactive releases. The new PAGs are in many ways worse than the extremely weak PAGs Bush tried to push out in the last days of that Administration that Obama pulled back.  The PAGs eliminate requirements to evacuate people when thyroid or skin radiation doses exceed certain levels, lift a lifetime limit on radiation from such an event that would have triggered relocation, recommend dumping radioactive waste in municipal garbage dumps not designed for such waste, and propose five options for drinking water, all of which …