1. EPA’s Response to Fukushima Japan Nuclear Emergency Mike Boyd, Senior Health Physicist EPA/Office of Radiation & Indoor Air Presented at 2011 OAS Annual Meeting Richmond, VA August 24, 2011

2. Impact of Earthquake and Tsunami Damage to the Reactors Level 7 - "Major Accident" on International Nuclear Event Scale – "A major release of radioactive material with widespread health and environmental effects requiring implementation of planned and extended countermeasures" – Loss of Cooling – Damage to Secondary Containment Vessels – Fuel Meltdown Releases of Radiation to the Environment “ More than several tens of thousands of terabequerels of I-131” – Air releases – Intentional Venting & Hydrogen Explosions – Ocean Releases – Intentional release of Cooling water & Leakage http://www.dae.gov.in/daiichi/japan130411.pdf 2

3. EPA Response Emergency Operations Center Radiological Emergency Response Team Regional Response RadNet – Fixed Network – Deployable Monitors – Precipitation Sampling – Milk Sampling – Drinking Water Sampling – Laboratory Analysis EPA Japan Incident Website: http://www.epa.gov/japan2011/ 3

4. National Radiation Monitoring System EPA's RadNet monitors across the US showed typical fluctuations in background radiation levels. Additional Deployable Monitors were sent to the Aleutian islands, Hawaii, Guam and Saipan to improve monitoring coverage for this event. The levels detected to date are far below levels of concern 4

5. Air Monitoring Stations 5

6. RadNet Deployable Monitors: Fukushima Response Nome Juneau Nome SaipanGuam 6

7. Deployable Monitors 7

8. Monitoring Results Why focus on Iodine-131? – Primary Component of Fukushima release – Gaseous Phase Transported Great Distance in Atmosphere – Sensitivity Easily detected and measured – Clearly Illustrates impacts and trends – Primary Source of Potential Exposure Concern for uptake in child thyroid 8

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18. Comparing Chernobyl Data to Current Event Data Highest I-131 in milk Highest I-131 in air Highest I-131 in rain Chernobyl 1986 136 pCi/L Spokane 1.6 pCi/m3 Boise & Phoenix 6,620 pCi/L Spokane Japan 2011 18 pCi/L Hilo, HI 0.84 pCi/m3 Boise 390 pCi/L Boise 18

19. What is Additional Risk from Fukushima? Trace levels of radioactive isotopes measured are consistent with the Japanese nuclear incident and far below levels of public health concern. Additional exposure from well below 1 mrem for individuals in US and Territories Measured levels hundreds to thousands of times lower than FDA Derived Intervention Levels (DILS) http://www.epa.gov/radiation/understand/perspective.html 19