research on human health effects of low doses of ionizing radiation was prepared by a Committee of the
National Research Council, National Academy of
Sciences. In 1984, a review of the epidemiology program was prepared by a subcommittee of the Health
and
Environmental Research Advisory Committee
(HERAC) to DOE. These reviews. are summarized
and discussed briefly in Appendix D.) No overall evaluation of the DOE epidemiologic record, however, has
ever been released in a form available to the general
public.
In 1988, Physicians for Social Responsibility under-
took an effort to meet that need as part of the overall
mandate of its Physicians Task Force on the Health
DOE-sponsored epidemiologic studies published during the last several decades, the Task Force has also
made assessments of recent policy changes. In 1989,
Admiral Watkins told the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs:
As an employer, DOE has a moral and ethical responsibility to monitor the health of its workers in an effort
to ensure thatall potential harmful aspects of the work
environment are controlled .... Epidemiologic sur-
veys of our work force represent a key element of our
programmatic efforts to successfully mect this
obligation.”
Subsequent sections of this report, and its concusions, will consider the extent to which that responsibiliry has been met.
wel
at
Risks of Nuclear Weapons Production. The present
report summarizes that effort.
URDLASa
While most of its work focused on the analysis of
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