EPA Nukes Radiation Rules
July 17th, 2013Via: EnviroReporter:
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s draft EPA “Protective Action Guide” (PAG), posted on its website April 15, allows hundreds to thousands of times more radiation in disasters than the agency had previously allowed. Americans have until Monday, July 15 to comment* even though the EPA made the new PAG effective immediately.
According to EPA’s own data, the new PAGs will result in exponentially higher radiation-induced fatal cancers than the current goal of one in ten thousand to one in a million Americans.
In various exposure scenarios listed in the report, depending on which radionuclide, the resultant cancer rates would claim several out of ten, one in eight, one in six – even as low as one in 1.7.
The EPA PAG’s justification for these astronomically higher numbers is that during a disaster like a nuclear meltdown, a terrorist ‘dirty bomb,’ or a nuclear detonation, all limits currently for radiation exposure in air, water, food and soil are targets for revision.
“These PAGs are basically admitting that contamination levels could be so high from such an event that they may not be able to be cleaned up to existing standards such as the drinking water contamination levels,” says Maryland-based Nuclear Information and Resource Service. “Thus, EPA would permit unacceptably high radiation risks at each of the stages after nuclear disaster without even suggesting any steps to prevent or minimize the potential disasters.”
Research Credit: neverwas
Interesting how the overly-zealous tree-hugging department switches sides on this. Personally, I suspect that Fukashima has, is or will so completely poison the west coast as to make it uninhabitable for any length of time. This entire policy and standard change reeks of ass-covering because nobody in office has balls big enough to evacuate 120 million people. There’s no money to accomplish it and no place to put those people. So changing definitions is nothing but bureaucratic bullshit. Everyone living on the west coast of north America should be prepared to leave on an immediate basis for the next 50 years.