The statistics provided below are based on information obtained from a questionnaire that is completed by individual researchers. Due to the nature of the information requested, some subjective interpretations of the questions should be expected. These statistics do not include 3 projects that relate to DOE activities but are not funded by the DOE or conducted at DOE facilities or by DOE staff.
- More projects are currently being added to the database. The statistics will be updated when the additions are complete.
* 81,600 of the ASTDR subjects (49% of subjects in the database) are medical records from epidemiological studies. This number does not represent actual people participating in experiments.
There are 35 reporting research facilities included in the current database. Twelve of these research facilities are DOE laboratories, 20 are non-DOE laboratories (such as hospitals and universities) receiving DOE funding, and 3 are other sites (*) doing studies related to DOE activities. Detailed information can be obtained about most of these research facilities through the above links to their home pages on the World Wide Web.
The DOE-funded or DOE-operated research facilities reported a total of 258 projects during FY98, 83% were conducted at DOE facilities and 17% at non-DOE facilities. Three national laboratories, BNL, LLNL, and LBNL comprised over 58% of the projects while BNL had the largest number with 71 projects. Ninety-two of the 258 projects were not supported by DOE grants. The reason these projects were listed in the DOE's Human Subjects Research Database was because the research was performed in DOE laboratories or by DOE employees. Projects with current IRB approval have been listed in the database even if they received no funds or reported no current human subject activity. These projects were either formerly active or are new initiatives. Three additional projects were included because they are related to DOE activities. They are NOT included in the statistics.
The funding from DOE that was directly associated with tasks or portions of projects involving the use of human subjects was about 27 million dollars during FY98; funding from other federal and private sources at DOE facilities for human subjects projects was 11.5 million. (Some DOE-funded projects at non-DOE sites also receive financial support from non-DOE sources. The total funding for human subjects activities is 40.4 million, which includes 1.9 million of these funds.) Two DOE laboratories, BNL and PNNL, accounted for ~20% of the DOE funding. One project, managed by the National Academy of Sciences with the Radiation Effects Research Foundation (RERF) in Hiroshima, Japan, accounted for 43.7% of the DOE reported funding. Of the NAS funds, ~95% go directly to the RERF.
About 95% of the total human subjects in the database are records from registries, questionnaires, surveys and epidemiological studies. Because these studies were included in the database the total number of human subjects reported is not representative of actual people participating but includes a large number of records from human subjects.
A total of 166,200 human subjects were reported during FY98 in DOE-funded or DOE-site projects. About 40.5% are from DOE facilities and ~59.5% from non-DOE facilities. This year one ATSDR epidemiological study included 81,600 subjects, 49% of the total number of subjects in the database. ORAU (25.6% of reported human subjects) serves as the Epidemiologic Surveillance Data Center for the DOE and most of the subjects from this facility are from records-based studies and registries. The NAS project is also primarily an epidemiological study with some clinical followup. Other epidemiological studies also contribute to the total number of human subjects, making it appear large.
DOE does NOT support any research in which the effect of radiation upon humans per se is the object of study. Of the 258 projects listed in this database approximately 87 involved human exposure to radiation. The nature of the exposure was therapeutic, clinical, or occupational. The number of volunteers participating in these studies was 4043. In all of the studies the radiation used was as a tracer to facilitate imaging (i.e. PET), or for diagnostic (i.e. X-Ray) and/or therapeutic reasons.