* U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OF FICK; 18 78-F83-887 ' } jhe a PN AGL 7S eee CONCURRENCES eee RTG, $¥MBOL ek et ete ee INITIAL S/S sia, fe Ee cay merrier sne Mrs. Ruth Van Cleve Director, Office of _-a nepene al Territorial Affairs Department of Interior Washington, D. C. 20240 a RTG. SYMBOL rn INETIALS/ Dear Mrs. Van Cleve: ed DATE During meetings held in your office on May 17 with Messrs. Ted Mitchel] and Earl Gilmore, and on July 6 with Dr. Hugh Pratt, I commented upon po RTG, EYMBOL the general subject of U.S. radiation exposure criteria and its relation- ship to the Enewetak resettlement. Subsequent to the May 17 meeting, I sent copies of appropriate portions of Federal Radiation Council (FRC) documents to you. The matter also was discussed in our letter to you of May 15, 1979, re the Bikini/Eneu situation. I would, however, Tike to elaborate a bit on this subject. PIN TIALS) biG. LD Seite Sh eer nel OATE RTG. SYMBOL The FRC recommended that, for the general U.S. population, the individual should not receive over 500 millirem per year to the whole body or to the bone marrow. §1G. The FRC also recommended that "...every effort should be made to encourage the maintenance of radiation doses as far below this guide as practicable." In the absence of knowledge concerning the radiation exposure received by the individual, the FRC "...introduced as an operational technique, where individual whole body doses are not eee INITIALS/ SIG. ee ee See DATE RTG. SYMBOL fa a a known, the use of a 'suitable sample' of the exposed population in which the guide for the average exposure of the sample should be one-third the (guide} for individual members of the group," (i.e., that it is reasonable to assume that the individual would not vary from the average by a factor greater than 3). Therefore, the FRC indicated that the average | exposure for a suitable sample of a population should not exceed 170 millirem per year, assuming that individual exposure Tevels are not known. In addition, to protect the genetic pool of the U.S. population (i.e., "Considerations of population genetics..."}, the FRC recommended “...a RTG. SYMGOL eermnemes INITIAL S/ SiG. ATG. SYMBOL per capita dose limitation for the gonads of 5 rems (i.e., 5000 millirems ee in 30 years.” The whole body dose was considered to be the equivatent of INITIALS / J DOE FORM AD-95 (1277) OFFICIAL FILE COPY SIG. a aS ers oe BATE