Pharmacology, Toxicology and Environmental Health Commons^™

Introduction To Special Issue On Radiation Effects, P. Andrew Karam

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] "How dangerous is radiation? How much radiation does it take to give us cancer? Are we wasting money on overly restrictive regulations, or are we not being sufficiently protective of our radiation workers and the public? How much clean-up is necessary on our Department of Energy facilities? What about Yucca Mountain and nuclear reactor plants – can they be made safe?

These are only a few of the questions that have been asked, and will continue to be asked, about radiation. Unfortunately, these all come down, in part or in whole, to the question “What is the shape of …

Effects Of The Shape Of The Radiation Dose-Response Curve On Public Acceptance Of Radiation And Nuclear Energy, Audeen W. Fentiman

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] “The public generally accepts the premise that exposure to radiation can have an undesirable effect. Furthermore, it believes that as the radiation dose increases, the magnitude of the effect will increase. On the other hand, while the background radiation dose varies from a few hundred millirem/year (a few millisieverts/yr) in some places to a few thousand millirem/yr (tens of millisieverts/yr) in others, researchers have been unable to find a correlation between the level of background radiation and incidence of cancer or other maladies attributable to radiation.

…

Because there is considerable controversy about the relationship between radiation dose and …

The Debate On The Health Effects Attributable To Low Radiation Exposure, Abel J. Gonzalez

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] "Few scientific issues have aroused passions more than the dispute about the health effects attributable to low levels of exposure to ionizing radiation (or radiation in short) and the currently authoritative dose response hypothesis, termed “linear non-threshold,” or LNT. Finding out whether health effects are induced by low-level radiation exposures, and if so, what they are, has become a kind of contest rather than a serious scientific inquiry. Sometimes it seems that rationality, or a methodical examination of the unknown, has disappeared from this debate. While the confrontation of different hypotheses is typical in academic discussions – at least …

Historical Development Of The Linear Nonthreshold Dose-Response Model As Applied To Radiation, Ronald L. Kathren

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] "Despite the nearly universal adoption of the linear nonthreshold dose response model (LNT) as the primary basis for radiation protection standards for the past half century, the LNT remains highly controversial and a contentious topic of discussion among health physicists, radiation biologists, and other radiological scientists. Indeed, it has been pointed out that the LNT has assumed the status of a paradigm, synonymous with an ideal, standard, or paragon or perhaps to some, a sacred cow. Reduced to its very basics, the LNT postulates that every increment of ionizing radiation dose, however small, carries with it a commensurate increase …

Characterization Of The Dust/Smoke Aerosol That Settled East Of The World Trade Center (Wtc) In Lower Manhattan After The Collapse Of The Wtc 11 September 2001, Paul J. Lioy, Clifford P. Weisel, Et Al, Robert C. Hale

VIMS Articles

The explosion and collapse of the World Trade Center (WTC) was a catastrophic event that produced an aerosol plume impacting many workers, residents, and commuters during the first few days after 11 September 2001. Three bulk samples of the total settled dust and smoke were collected at weather-protected locations east of the WTC on 16 and 17 September 200 1; these samples are representative of the generated material that settled immediately after the explosion and fire and the concurrent collapse of the two structures. We analyzed each sample, not differentiated by particle Size, for inorganic and organic composition. In the …

Five-Hundred Life-Saving Interventions And Their Misuse In The Debate Over Regulatory Reform, Lisa Heinzerling

RISK: Health, Safety & Environment (1990-2002)

The author argues that John D. Graham, administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, holds strong anti-environmental biases and has perpetuated and encouraged a misrepresentation of his own research, which has largely influenced health, safety, and environmental regulation.

Reactivity Profiles Of Ligands Of Mammalian Retinoic Acid Receptors: A Preliminary Corepa Analysis, Steven P. Bradbury, G. T. Ankley, O. G. Mekenyan, V. . Kamenska, P. K. Schmieder

Steven P. Bradbury

Retinoic acid and associated derivatives comprise a class of endogenous hormones that bind to and activate different families of retinoic acid receptors (RARs, RXRs), and control many aspects of vertebrate development. Identification of potential RAR and RXR ligands is of interest both from a pharmaceutical and toxicological perspective. The recently developed COREPA (COmmon REactivity PAttern) algorithm was used to establish reactivity profiles for a limited data set of retinoid receptor ligands in terms of activation of three RARs (a, b, g) and an RXR (a). Conformational analysis of a training set of retinoids and related analogues in terms of thermodynamic …

Predicting Metal Interactions With A Novel Quantitative Ion Character -Activity Relationship (Qicar) Approach, David R. Ownby

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Environmental toxicologists adopted QSARs from pharmacology fairly early on to predict organic contaminant toxicity. In contrast, models relating metal ion characteristics to their bioactivity remain poorly explored and underutillized. Quantitative Ion Character-Activity Relationships (QICARs) have recently been developed to predict metal toxicity. The QICAR approach based on metal-ligand binding tendencies has been applied to a wide range of effects, species, and media on a single metal basis. In previous single metal studies, a softness parameter and the ; log of KOH ; were the ion qualities with the highest predictive value for toxicity. Here, QICAR modeling was brought a step …