Chernobyl Nuclear Accident Congressional Hearings Transcript

123
Juue 19, 1986 Committee oti Energy arid Natural Resources
On page 85 in the hearing transcript, Senator Metzenbaum,
in a quote Erom the London Times , stated EPA ignored some of
the data because the Agency thought the readings were too
high. He asked Mr. Meyers to respond.
EPA's response follows:
As part of the Federal Task. Force's response to the
Chernobyl accident, EPA's Office of Radiation Programs made
extensive efforts to obtain credible radiation data from
foreign countries and to make that data available to all
interested parties. EPA and other Federal agencies requested
and obtained data through contacts in the international
scientific community, the World Health Organization, the
International Atomic Energy Agency, and through formal requests
of governments via the State Department.
The following quality assurance and reporting rationale
were applied to all data:
o Data must have originated from a reputable health
organization.
o Data would be reported as received if there were no
obvious errors.
o All values would be checked for errors in data entry.
o Extreme or conflicting values would be reviewed and
corrected, if identified as erroneous.
This "real time" reporting rationale allowed EPA to make
the data available for timely dose and risk calculations while
still assuring reasonable quality. However, a few situations
were encountered which required delays in reporting data and/or
revisions of reported values: ^
o Telex reports identified direct exposure values in
excess of 100 Rads per hour (R/H), The telex printed in upper
case only and there was a space just before the R/H. A second
telex identified the values as MICRO R/H (uR/H). The
( u= 10"^) had not printed in the first telex.
o Values of 1,000 mR/H (extremely elevated but possible)
were reported by EPA, but later corrected to 1,000 w R/H when
that same country identified normal background levels as
10 mR/H. A background or ambient level of 10 u R/H is what
would be normally expected for that country. The country was