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USA to cut funding for research on low level radiation and health?

 many more people may have incurred fatal cancers from low doses, simply based on the statistical probably of those fatalities occurring across very large populations.

Budget Deal Could Crush Low-Dose Radiation Research, Forbes, by Jeff McMahon,  15 Aug 11, “…..The nation’s only Low-Dose Radiation Research program is likely to suffer a severe cut in funding not long after the United States was blanketed with low doses of radioactive fallout from the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan…….Dr. David J. Brenner, a professor in the Columbia University medical school’s Center for Radiological Research, in a recent editorial in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

Brenner questioned cuts in funding for low-dose research in late July, based on the president’s proposal, which reduced funding for the Low-Dose Program by more than a third, from $25 million to $14 million. The program supports research at a suite of universities and institutes and hosts an annual gathering of scientists…..

 more cuts could be trigged by automatic deficit-reduction laws.

At Energy’s Low-Dose Radiation Research Program, officials are waiting for the impacts, which have yet to be finalized in the detailed budgets of each department:…….

Dr. Brenner departs from many other scientists and government officials who downplay the effects of low-dose radiation exposure. When it comes to Chernobyl, for example, he attributes the commonly quoted fatal cancer toll—4,000—to selective attention to “the more highly exposed groups — the implicit assumption being that the radiation-induced cancer risk for the large number of people receiving lower doses is zero.”

In fact, Brenner contends many more people may have incurred fatal cancers from low doses, simply based on the statistical probably of those fatalities occurring across very large populations. …… http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2011/08/09/budget-deal-could-crush-low-dose-radiation-research/

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August 15, 2011 - Posted by | health, USA

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