We report a search for the presence of dust in the intra-cluster medium based on the study of statistical reddening of background galaxies .
Armed with the Red Sequence Cluster survey data , from which we extracted ( i ) a catalog of 458 clusters with z _ { clust } < 0.5 and ( ii ) a catalog of \sim 90,000 galaxies with photometric redshift 0.5 < z _ { ph } < 0.8 and photometric redshift uncertainty \delta z _ { ph } / ( 1 + z _ { ph } ) < 0.06 , we have constructed several samples of galaxies according to their projected distances to the cluster centers .
No significant color differences [ < E ( B - R _ { c } ) > = 0.005 \pm 0.008 , and < E ( V - z ^ { \prime } ) > = 0.000 \pm 0.008 ] were found for galaxies background to the clusters , compared to the references .
Assuming a Galactic extinction law , we derive an average visual extinction of < A _ { V } > = 0.004 \pm 0.010 towards the inner 1 \times R _ { 200 } of clusters .