CIRRPC (Committee on Interagency Radiation Research and Policy Coordination) scientific review of the proposal: VA (Veterans Administration) assessment of veterans with military service at sites of temporarily augmented ionizing radiation

Public Law 98-160 requires the Administrator of Veterans Affairs with the Director, Office of Technology Assessment, to determine the feasibility of conducting a scientifically valid study of the long-term adverse health effects of exposure to low-level ionizing radiation during military service in Japan or at nuclear-weapons tests. The VA proposal indicates that 99% of exposed veterans received less than 5 rem and the average exposure of the entire group of about 250,000 veterans was 0.5 rem, a very low dose. A matched control group would be questioned, as would the exposed veterans, in Phase I and a selected portion would receive physical and psychological examinations in Phase II. Studies of possible effects on the rate and causes of death and on hereditary defects would be included