Workers uneasy about aid for Cold War illness
Some think it'll be hard to convince the government that
their health problems came from making bombsSunday, April 16, 2000
By Brent Hunsberger of The Oregonian staff
Kathy Williamson might be lucky. She has in her possession the dose estimates and official reports of the blue flash, a critical plutonium accident, that her husband saw close-up 38 years ago as a nuclear process operator at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.
In an instant on April 7, 1962, James R. Williamson of Richland, Wash., absorbed 10 rads, or radiation-absorbed doses, of gamma rays. That's twice the amount of radiation allowed workers in one year.
If the 66-year-old's persistent cough and lack of energy turn out to be symptoms of a serious disease, Kathy Williamson hopes the records will give her husband an advantage should they seek medical reimbursement under the Clinton administration's landmark compensation plan. The initiative, announced last week, could help at least 3,000 ill workers who labored at federal nuclear production facilities during the Cold War.
But beneath the fanfare accompanying Energy Secretary Bill Richardson's announcement Wednesday, workers' unions and scientists worry that workers will have a tough time convincing the government that their cancer, beryllium-related diseases and other illnesses stem from Cold War bomb-making activities.
They also assert that the government is unfairly holding workers at Hanford and other bomb-making facilities to a higher standard than workers at three Energy Department uranium-enrichment plants in Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee.
"There is no scientific or policy justification for treating Hanford any differently than those at Piketon, Paducah or Oak Ridge," said Richard Miller, policy analyst for the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers International Union, which represents 1,000 workers at Hanford. "Hanford could arguably be considered a far more dangerous facility than Paducah."
Under the proposal, workers with cancer must be found to have received certain radiation doses before qualifying for a $100,000 lump-sum payment or other negotiated settlement covering health bills, lost wages and job retraining costs. But workers at the department's uranium enrichment plants need only show that they worked on-site for a year and contracted one of 15 types of cancers recognized by the federal government as being associated with radiation exposure.
For ill Hanford workers and their survivors, meeting the required threshold -- in consultation with federal representatives who pledge to research records -- might be difficult. The government's record-keeping at its nuclear processing plants became comprehensive only since the late 1980s. Determining radiation doses could prove costly, time-consuming and contentious, critics fear.
"You can't expect workers to manufacture dose records out of thin air," said Jim Ellenberger, assistant director for safety and health at the AFL-CIO in Washington, D.C. "And if that's the bottom line, it won't work."
Department officials on Friday defended the differing thresholds, saying operators of the uranium-enrichment plants failed to keep proper records and warn workers of the risks they faced handling dangerous fission products, including plutonium-239, neptunium-237 and technetium-99.
"It's an ethical decision," one senior department adviser said Friday of the government's choice to allow uranium workers outright settlements. The official spoke on condition of anonymity. "We think it was particularly improper. Workers weren't told of the risks they faced."
Energy officials pledged Friday to bear the burden of searching worker-dose records, however, reconstructing dose estimates and siding with workers when records are unclear or indicate a wide range of exposures.
Kathy Williamson isn't sure what to think of the department's new effort.
It was just five years ago that her family obtained the official reports of the plutonium accident that her husband and three other workers witnessed at a Hanford plutonium waste-recovery facility.
One report shows that the radiation-dose estimate for Employee No. 23, her husband, was gleaned unconventionally, because the gamma rays that pelted his body were so intense they rendered the film inside his dosimeter unreadable by normal methods.
Two colleagues standing near James Williamson at the time have died. He has no diagnosed health problems, aside from high cholesterol. But his wife notices his lack of energy and persistent cough. He avoids seeing a doctor, she says.
The Washington Department of Labor and Industries closed his workers' compensation claim in May 1989.
(Emphasis added)