National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
Oak Ridge Center for Risk Analysis is under contract with CDC/NIOSH/OCAS to provide scientific support to maintain and update the software program called “NIOSH-IREP” (National Institutes for Occupational Safety and Health – Interactive Radioepidemiological Program). NIOSH-IREP is a complex computer program that utilizes epidemiological data, mathematical risk models, and statistical uncertainty distributions to calculate the unique compensability of each claim filed under Part B of the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act (EEOICPA). NIOSH-IREP is the calculational tool used by the Department of Labor (DOL) to estimate the probability of causation/assigned share (PC/AS) for specific cancer cases. This estimate of PC/AS is made using reconstructions of the radiation dose to specific organs provided by NIOSH and its contractors for each claim.
Under Part B of EEOICPA, present and former radiation workers with a diagnosed cancer will receive a meritorious award for their claim when there is at least a 1% chance that the calculated values of PC/AS from NIOSH-IREP equal or exceed a value of 50%. This is similar to saying that claims will be awarded when NIOSH-IREP determines that there is at least a 1% chance of doubling the baseline risk of a specific cancer in an unexposed population having attributes of age, gender, and, in some special instances, ethnicity and smoking history, that are similar to those of the claimant with disease who was exposed in the workplace to radiation.
NIOSH-IREP software: https://irep.oraucoc.org
