Environmental resistance continues against federal rollbacks on radiation protection standards

Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) and Committee to Bridge the Gap (CBG) have led a coalition of dozens of environmental, public interest, and safe energy groups -- including Beyond Nuclear -- in responding to the NCRP's (National Commission on Radiation Protection) proposed regulatory rollback on radioactivity protections, by its arbitrarily and capriciously short deadline for public comment of April 15th. See the coalition comments here.

The irony of April 15th -- "Tax Day" -- for a public comment deadline, is that NCRP was paid by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS, a taxpayer funded agency) to empanel numerous federal officials from such agencies as DHS, DOE, and EPA, to draft this major rollback on radiation protections. These officials -- whose salaries are paid by American taxpayers -- are supposed to protect the citizens and residents of this country against the risks of radioactivity, but are instead doing the exact opposite.

Both CBG at its website, and NIRS at its website, have posted updates on not only NCRP's proposed regulatory rollback, but also parallel proposals by EPA and even other federal agencies.

Doug Guarino with the National Journal's Global Security Newswire reported on April 11th that President Obama's nominee for EPA Administrator, Gina McCarthy, refused to answer his question about this radiation protection rollback. McCarthy has led the regulatory rollback effort at EPA, over objections from EPA officials at the agency's Superfund division, from her perch atop EPA's nuclear industry-friendly Office of Radiation and Indoor Air.

Guarino reported that not only did McCarthy refuse to answer questions about the radiation regulatory rollbacks, but a McCarthy EPA assitant also physically shoved a reporter.

Guarino broke the story on NCRP's proposed regulatory rollback, as posted below.

On April 15th, Guarino also reported that EPA has now officially granted 90 days for public comment on its proposed radiation protection regulatory rollbacks. Just one example of the proposed rollbacks is viciously radioactive I-131 (linked to an epidemic of thyroid cancer and other pathologies in the regions surrounding Chernobyl, especially in children exposed to fallout) in drinking water: EPA has proposed a 27,000-fold decrease in protections.

Please contact President Obama, your U.S. Senators, and your U.S. Representative to protest this absolutely outrageous proposal. Urge them in the strongest possible terms to retain current EPA Superfund radioactivity contamination clean-up standards as the norm for dirty bomb, nuclear power plant disaster, radioactive waste shipping accident, etc. recovery efforts. You can be patched through to your Members of Congress via the U.S. Congressional Switchboard at: (202) 224-3121.

President Obama can be contacted by calling the White House at 202-456-1111, writing him online via the White House web form, or writing him at: President Obama; The White House; 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW; Washington, DC 20500.

For the past two weeks, on its website and in its weekly email bulletins, Beyond Nuclear has been posting updates on the Obama administration's proposed regulatory rollbacks on radiation protection standards.