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Tues. 4:15 p.m.: EPA moving to loosen radiation limits

FILE - In this Jan. 9, 2013, file photo, a CT scan technician prepares for a patient at the Silver Cross Emergency Care Center in Homer Glen, Ill. The Trump administration is quietly trying to weaken radiation rules, relying on scientific outliers who argue that a little radiation damage is actually good for you _ like a little bit of sunlight. (AP Photo/M. Spencer Green, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration is quietly moving to weaken U.S. radiation regulations, turning to scientific outliers who argue that a bit of radiation damage is actually good for you — like a little bit of sunlight.

The government’s current, decades-old guidance says that any exposure to harmful radiation is a cancer risk. And critics say the proposed change could lead to higher levels of exposure for workers at nuclear installations and oil and gas drilling sites, medical workers doing X-rays and CT scans, people living next to Superfund sites and any members of the public who one day might find themselves exposed to a radiation release.

The Trump administration already has targeted a range of other regulations on toxins and pollutants, including coal power plant emissions and car exhaust, that it sees as costly and burdensome for businesses. Supporters of the EPA’s new radiation guidance argue the government’s current no-tolerance rule for radiation damage forces unnecessary spending for handling exposure in accidents, at nuclear plants, in medical centers and at other sites.

“This would have a positive effect on human health as well as save billions and billions and billions of dollars,” Edward Calabrese, a toxicologist at the University of Massachusetts, said in 2016. He was to be the lead witness at a congressional hearing Wednesday on EPA’s push for what it calls transparency in science.

The proposed rule would require regulators to consider “various threshold models across the exposure range” when it comes to dangerous substances.

While it does not specify that it’s addressing radiation and chemicals, an EPA news release on the rule quotes Calabrese as saying it would: “The proposal represents a major scientific step forward by recognizing the widespread occurrence of non-linear dose responses in toxicology and epidemiology for chemicals and radiation and the need to incorporate such data in the risk assessment process.”

The comment period for the science regulation has ended and the agency is currently reviewing the comments. There’s no specific date for final action by the administration. The EPA declined to make an official with its radiation-protection program available.

Radiation is everywhere, from potassium in bananas to the microwaves popping our popcorn. Most of it is benign. But what’s of concern is the higher-energy, shorter-wave radiation, like X-rays, that can penetrate and disrupt living cells, sometimes causing cancer.

As recently as this March, the EPA’s online guidelines for radiation effects advised: “Current science suggests there is some cancer risk from any exposure to radiation.”

“Even exposures below 100 millisieverts” — an amount roughly equivalent to 25 chest X-rays or about 14 CT chest scans — “slightly increase the risk of getting cancer in the future,” the agency’s guidance said.

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