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.
* 1,125,856 of the total human subjects (88% of subjects in the database) are from studies conducted at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), mostly in epidemiological studies. This figure has not been included in the chart.
There are 43 reporting research facilities included in the current database. Twelve of these research facilities are DOE laboratories, 31 are non-DOE laboratories (such as hospitals and universities) receiving DOE funding or 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.
This year DOE funded projects from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH); and some additional Former Worker Projects (FWP) were added to the database. The addition of these projects resulted in dramatic increases from last year in the number of projects, funds, and human subjects.
The DOE-funded or DOE-operated research facilities reported a total of 295 projects during FY99 of which 71% were conducted at DOE facilities and 29% at non-DOE facilities. Three national laboratories, BNL, LLNL, and LBNL comprised over 52% of the projects while BNL had the largest number with 78 projects. Eighty of the 295 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 or concerned DOE activities. 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.
The funding from DOE that was directly associated with tasks or portions of projects involving the use of human subjects was about 40 million dollars during FY99; funding from other federal and private sources at DOE facilities for human subjects projects was 12.4 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 53 million, which includes 4 million of these funds.) Three DOE laboratories, BNL, LLNL, and ORAU, accounted for ~16% 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 29% of the DOE reported funding. Of the NAS funds, ~95% go directly to the RERF.
About 97% (1,236,475) 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 1,281,058 human subjects were reported during FY99 in DOE-funded, DOE-site, or DOE-related projects. About 8% are from DOE facilities and 92% from non-DOE facilities. This year one NIOSH epidemiological study included 600,000 subjects, 47% of the total number of subjects in the database. ORAU (4.4% 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 295 projects listed in this database approximately 87 involved human exposure to radiation. The number of subjects involved in these studies was 3542. 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.