Scientific Advances Point to Improved Understanding of Radiation Exposure – Livermore Independent

LIVERMORE An eminent biological scientist with ties to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is part of a major effort to develop a national research program that can explore the detailed health effects of low-level radiation exposures.

These are the kinds of exposures that people get from medical tests, long airplane flights and certain jobs in medicine, in the nuclear industry and in mining.

They can come from radiological events like nuclear accidents, but also from living in areas with naturally high levels of radiation from radon gas and from certain soils.

The scientist is Joe Gray, who worked at LLNL in the 1970s and 1980s before moving to UC San Francisco and then to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory as associate director.

Gray has had a distinguished career with 93 patents and more than 500 publications, contributing especially to the fields of genetics and cancer. Today he is professor emeritus atOregonHealthSciencesUniversity.

He recently served as chair of a National Academies of Science panel that was assembled at the request of Congress to explore how to revitalize a national research program on the health effects of low-dose radiation.

The panels report, Leveraging Advances in Modern Science to Revitalize Low-Dose Radiation Research in theUnited States, can be downloaded free from the National Academies website.

As the word revitalize suggests, theU.S.once carried out an active low-level exposure research program but no longer does.

For decades,the most common concern about low level radiation exposure has been that it could cause cancer, Gray said in an interview.

Thats a genuine concern, but there are major uncertainties for several reasons, he said.

Much of the knowledge of radiation-induced cancer came from exposures experienced by survivors of the atomic bombings ofHiroshimaandNagasakiin 1945.

Those are difficult to compare with todays low-level exposures, because the doses are different in type, rate and quantity.

In addition, he wrote in a preface to the National Academies report, there is increasing evidence that low level exposures may produce non-cancer health outcomes, such as cardiovascular disease, neurological disorders, immune dysfunction and cataracts.

Advances made in recent years by the medical community in fields ranging from molecular biology to epidemiology and experimental design now make it possible to extract direct information on health effects, according to the report.

Carrying out this research is vital because low level exposures are on the rise with increasing numbers of medical tests like X-rays and CAT scans and treatment using radiopharmaceuticals.

These tests may well be worthwhile, he said, but since we are now able to measure their health effects, we should do so.

While these exposures may yield individual or societal benefit, they may also adversely affect human health, he wrote.

Some communities like indigenous groups, atomic veterans and uranium miners have been exposed involuntarily and may not receive or even agree with the presumed societal benefit, he continued.

Such disparities also raise social questions regarding environmental injustice.It is imperative that risks to all exposed populations be known, as well as is scientifically possible and that risk mitigation efforts be guided by that knowledge.

Current funding for low level radiation research at the U.S. Department of Energy is $5 million per year, not enough to get a research program off the ground, let alone fund the research itself, Gray and two co-authors argued early this summer inan article for the medical journal STAT.

The National Academies panel called for a research program that ramps up quickly to annual funding of $100 million and lasts at least 15 years.

The funding would support competitive proposals in epidemiological and biological research and also train and retain a new generation of radiation scientists across a range of disciplines, according to the STAT article.

The program would leverage recent developments in other fields, making use of new epidemiological methods and databases; and powerful new biological, measurement, and computational tools that previous researchers did not have at their disposal.

In addition to Gray, the National Academies panel consisted of 12 experts fromU.S.medical schools and health agencies, and one from theUKs Health Security Agency.

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Scientific Advances Point to Improved Understanding of Radiation Exposure - Livermore Independent