Departing Bush Administration EPA Dramatically Weakens Radiation Protections
Obama Administration Pulls the Standards Back Before Publication in the Federal Register

Jan. 21 --  On Jan. 15, in his second to last full day in office, outgoing EPA Acting Administrator Marcus Peacock signed off on new Protective Action Guides (PAGs) for radioactive releases.  They would permit radioactive concentrations in drinking water hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, and even millions of times higher than EPA's longstanding standards.  Because it takes a few days after approval for such matters to be published in the Federal Register and be official, publication wasn't achieved before the Inauguration.  Unless the Obama acts quickly, however, they will be published in the next few days.

The Committee to Bridge the Gap (CBG) and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) today called on the new Obama Administration to pull back the PAGs before they are published in the Federal Register.  Read the CBG-PEER news release.

A detailed report by Committee to Bridge the Gap reveals, radionuclide by radionuclide, the astronomical concentrations of radioactive contamination in drinking water proposed, which are orders of magnitude higher than EPA's longstanding drinking water limits.

Scores of organizations and individuals in October sent a letter to then-EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson strenuously objecting to plans to greatly increase permissible public exposures from a wide range of events resulting in release of radioactivity. 

The last-minute Bush Administration action would publish for public review and comment only about a third of the actual PAG text (see pre-publication draft here).  The full, unexpurgated internal confidential EPA draft can be read here.  Both were initially obtained by the trade publication Inside EPA.

Previous correspondence criticizing the related Dept. of Homeland Security's "Dirty Bomb" Protective Action Guides - Relaxed Cleanup Standards can be viewed here and here.

For more information, contact Dan Hirsch at 831-336-8003 or email:   contact.cbg@gmail.com

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