More than forty citizen sector organizations, including the national nonprofit Physicians for Social Responsibility, sent a letter Joint message Federal officials warn of public health consequences A series of executive orders By President Trump who directed the NRC to significantly weaken radiation protection standards in US federal law. The letter notes the severely disproportionate impacts on women and children of weakening current radiation exposure standards and calls for them to be strengthened.
The message has been posted here. It was led by the non-profit organization Generational Radiation Impact Project (fist) and Beyond nuclear. It was sent to the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commissioners and Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Surgeon General Dennis Hinton, and other key elected and appointed officials.
Trump’s recent executive orders direct the NRC to “reconsider” the linear threshold (LNT) model. The joint letter argues that this “would undermine public confidence by falsely claiming that NRC’s radiation risk models lack a scientific basis, despite decades of peer-reviewed evidence and international consensus.” The widely accepted LNT model has no “below regulatory concern” limit, i.e. no level below which radiation exposure can be considered as negligible or zero risk. When applied, LNT takes into account the cancer and health risks of all small exposures no matter how small.
Trump’s executive orders direct the NRC to establish new rules and “comprehensively review” existing radiation regulations, which will likely lead to the NRC abandoning LNT and raising permissible exposure limits.
A July 2025 Idaho National Laboratory Report Commissioned by the Department of Energy, it recommended relaxing the overall radiation standard fivefold to 500 millirem. In 2021 Norwegian Refugee Council Totally rejected Petition to raise the permissible radiation exposure level for all Americans, including children and pregnant women, to 10 rem per year, 100 times the current limit.
But the NRC’s past opposition to such changes could be reversed by Trump’s executive orders. If federal radiation regulations were weakened to allow exposure to 10 rem per year, scientists estimate that over a 70-year period, Four out of five people will develop cancer They wouldn’t have it otherwise.
Today’s joint letter emphasizes that health harms will not be evenly distributed across the population, but will disproportionately affect women and children, who are biologically more vulnerable to ionizing radiation than men. and An article published today in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists He cites extensive evidence “that women and young girls are more vulnerable to radiation damage than men – in some cases by as much as a tenfold difference” and that “infants are particularly vulnerable to radiation damage.”
“[NRC] “It bases its risk assessments on the male reference, a representative young adult model, and fails to reflect the greater impacts on infants, children, and women – pregnant or not,” the joint letter said. “More recent research has shown that external radiation harms children more than adults and female bodies more than male bodies. Research on internal exposures has not yet been sufficiently analyzed to discover whether there are significant differences in effect based on age or between males and females…. Current standards to account for these differences across life stages and sexes should therefore be strengthened, not weakened. Radiation causes infertility, pregnancy loss, birth complications and defects, as well as solid tumor cancer, leukemia, and non-cancerous outcomes.” Including cardiovascular disease, increased incidence of autoimmune diseases and ongoing new findings.
Cases where cancer, heart disease and vascular deterioration including stroke are caused by radiation are documented at higher rates in women than in men, according to the 2024 United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research report. Sex and ionizing radiation.
The joint letter urges the NRC to “address Executive Order mandates to ‘promote’ nuclear energy – a task outside the scope of its statutory regulatory mandate” and adopt “stronger, scientifically based radiation protections… Contemporary research indicates that the impact of radiation is far greater on females, children, and fetuses – the group most at risk after birth are girls from birth to age five. A true protective framework would replace the male reference with a life cycle model.”
“All U.S. radiation regulations and most radiation risk assessments are based on the results of the reference man,” he said. Mary OlsonCEO of GRIP, the organization that led and co-authored the joint letter Sex and ionizing radiation. “Young men, like the reference man, are harmed by radiation, but they are more resistant to harm than women and children. Radiation causes cancer in women at twice the rate of adult men, while the same exposure in early childhood will, throughout their lives, lead to cancer.” Seven times More cancer in young women, and Four times More in young males.”
“We know that radiation exposure causes disproportionate harm from both cancer and non-cancer-related diseases over the lifespan of women and especially young girls, but radiation is a risk to everyone,” he said. Amanda M. NicholsPh.D., lead author of Sex and ionizing radiation. “[President Trump’s] The executive order will allow industry to relax current standards for radiation protection, which are already far from adequate. This will have adverse health consequences for humans and our shared environments and puts us all at greater risk of negative health consequences. “
“Living near nuclear power facilities Doubles risk Leukemia In children, radiation is also associated with various reproductive harms including infertility, stillbirth, and birth defects cindy Volkers, Radiation and health risk specialist for non-governmental organizations Beyond nuclearsigned the joint letter. “Exposing people to more radiation, as this would do if implemented, would be tantamount to legitimizing their suffering as the price of nuclear expansion.”
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