** FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE **
February 4, 2026
Media contact: Anna Linakis, Executive Director, Greater Boston PSR
Email: info@gbpsr.org / Phone: (617) 239-1977
Brookline, Mass. – February 3, 2026 – Greater Boston Physicians for Social Responsibility (GBPSR) is pleased to announce that it is to receive $700,000 in Congressionally Directed Spending (CDS) to coordinate a project investigating the health and radiologic impacts of the decommissioning of the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station (Plymouth MA) on neighboring communities.
GBPSR is grateful to Senators Markey and Warren in advocating for and helping secure federal funds to carry out this urgently needed comprehensive health study.
GBPSR will administer the project and convene an expert panel to inform its direction and review its results. Dr. Petros Koutrakis, Akira Yamaguchi Professor of Environmental Health and Human Habitation at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, will oversee the health study. GBPSR will be working with a consortium of public health entities, which include, in addition to Harvard SPH, Dr. Philip Landrigan’s Program for Global Public Health and the Common Good at Boston College and the Massachusetts Medical Society. Local community groups, including Save the Bay, Cape Downwinders and Pilgrim Watch, offered their endorsement for this project and will be key to its implementation.
In the United States, little is known about community exposures and related health impacts from nuclear power station decommissioning. This project will establish ambient monitoring sites at outdoor sites in southeastern Massachusetts and Cape Cod in the airshed of the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station to assess levels of particle radiation; assess exposures to particle radiation in community members living near each monitoring site; and assemble an expert panel of scientists, public health professionals and others with expertise in radiation and health to evaluate the current radiation issues regarding decommissioning nuclear power plants and to evaluate the data collected in this study and disseminate the findings to the local community and to elected officials.
This project is important to the health of citizens of Massachusetts as there are few studies of the health impacts of nuclear power plants in general and no studies of the health effects of decommissioning nuclear power plants specifically. This would be the first study of particle radiation emitted during decommissioning of a nuclear plant in the United States.
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Greater Boston Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) is a physician-led non-profit advocacy organization with approximately 1,600 members. Our chapter includes experts in public health, cancer epidemiology, occupational medicine, environmental health, emergency medicine, and disaster preparedness.
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