By Alvin Powell

Special to the Gazette

Robin Reed is probing the foundations of genetic diseases, work that would be impossible without a little-known division of Harvard's Central Administration called the Radiation Protection Office.

Reed, an assistant professor of cell biology at the Medical School, is trying to understand spliceosomes, large molecules that help cut and paste genetic material inside a cell. Errors in that process are responsible for 15 percent of all inherited diseases.

Reed's work, like that of thousands of other Harvard researchers, requires the use of radioactive materials that let her trace processes too small to see. The Radiation Protection Office makes the use of those materials possible, training researchers in safe handling, and monitoring the use of the materials in the laboratory.

"Given the scale of Harvard's research environment, the need for a Radiation Protection Office is very clear," said Thomas Vautin, associate vice president for facilities and environmental services and a member of Harvard's Radiation Safety Committee. "Harvard operates under a license issued by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. We need to manage compliance with the regulations through one office."

Harvard had 868 researchers using radioactive materials in 1962, the year it first gained the authority to license its own people to use radioactive compounds. Today, that number has grown nearly five times, to more than 4,000.

Harvard's Radiation Protection Office, made up of a staff of professionals trained in radiation safety, grew to meet the increasing demands. The staff burgeoned from one full- and one half-time position in 1962 to 13 full-time staffers today. Overseeing it all was Jacob Shapiro.

Shapiro, who retired in September after more than 30 years as Harvard's radiation protection officer, became a nationally known expert in radiation safety. His book on the subject, Radiation Protection: A Guide for Scientists and Physicians, written in 1970, is used in college classes all over the country and is a standard radiation safety reference. The book is acclaimed as one of the most readable on a sometimes technically challenging subject.

"He has a knack for taking something complex and making it straightforward," said Joseph Ring, who succeeded Shapiro as Harvard's radiation protection officer.

Shapiro came to Harvard in 1960, just two years after the University created the Environmental Health and Safety Department, which oversees the staffs that handle radiation safety, chemical safety, and the safe handling of other potentially hazardous materials.

In 1962, Shapiro spearheaded Harvard's application to the NRC for the authority to license its own researchers. The authority was granted, allowing researchers to apply to University officials instead of the NRC for permission to handle radioactive materials. Recently, the NRC transferred its regulation of radioactive material-users at the University and elsewhere around the state to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Today, the radiation protection staff trains and tests researchers and administers licenses. It also conducts an inspection program in which staffers visit nearly 330 laboratory groups, made up of 2,200 individual labs, at least once a month, in announced and unannounced visits.

Technicians use Geiger counters and other monitoring devices to check the use of radioactive materials, and they monitor laboratory hoods and vents to ensure radiation is properly contained.

Each month, radiation protection staff also collect and analyze special badges worn by lab workers to measure radiation exposure. High exposures are rare, Ring said.

"We go through the laboratories and assist them in the conduct of safe science, which includes all aspects of safety and minimizing exposures," Ring said.

After radioactive material is used, the radiation protection staff collects and manages disposal of radioactive waste. Most of the waste consists of ordinary laboratory items, such as test tubes, absorbent paper, and slender glass tubes called pipettes, that have come into contact with radioactive material.

Once collected, the material is stored until it loses most of its radioactivity, a process that takes between six months and two years.

"The Radiation Protection Office must work closely with researchers to ensure regulatory requirements are met in the most expedient manner possible," said Ring, who chairs the Commonwealth's Low Level Radioactive Waste Management Board, charged with finding a disposal site for Massachusetts' radioactive waste. "We do this not only through inspections, but by worker training, exposure monitoring, and permitting and maintaining a close working relationship with the Commonwealth."

The chance that the general public will be exposed to radiation is extremely low because of the low level of radioactive material used and the University's safety programs, Vautin said.

"The general public doesn't experience any risks in terms of exposure," he said.

More Regulation, More Paper

There have been several major changes over the last three decades, not because of advances in technology, but because of increased regulation. The inspector's major tool, the Geiger counter, is basically unchanged, while the amount of records and reports required has mounted tremendously, Shapiro said.

The vast majority of the radioactive material at Harvard is used in medical research, such as efforts to decode human DNA, at the Longwood Campus. The material, mostly radioactive iodine or phosphorus, is used as a marker to allow researchers to trace biological processes. Without that tracing method, many researchers wouldn't be able to conduct their work.

"[A spliceosome] is an exceedingly complex structure and we're trying to figure out how it works," said Reed, an assistant professor of cell biology. "If it were not [marked] with radioactivity we wouldn't be able to detect it."

Reed gives the radiation safety program high marks, even though she led a campaign in the 1980s to simplify the training. Reed said the inspectors perform an important function by keeping researchers on their toes. When a lab worker handles radioactive material day after day, sometimes performing tedious tasks, occasional lapses do happen, she said.

"That's a valuable thing they do," Reed said. "Most labs have a standard way of doing things. We have gloves and shields, but when you're making thousands of pipettes a day you might spill a microliter. They'll detect it."

Radiation protection staff are also working to ease the regulatory burden on academic institutions that use radioactive materials. In 1995, Harvard jointly hosted a conference with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the NRC to develop a dialogue about the NRC's strict radiation security rules. The conference brought together researchers, safety professionals, and regulators to discuss whether an academic research environment needs such stringent regulation. Based on this conference, the NRC is considering re-interpreting policies governing storage of very small quantities of radioactive materials.

"These rules were written with the defense and nuclear power industries in mind," Ring said.

For the future, Ring is pursuing plans to make the training course and other radiation protection resources accessible over the Internet. He also plans to push his staff to gain more training in other areas of environmental safety. That way, he said, a radiation protection inspector who is in the laboratory anyway can help correct unsafe usage of chemicals and other potentially hazardous materials.

"We're trying to make it easier for our researchers to do their work," Ring said.