Government may compensate sick Test Site workers

Friday, July 16, 1999 | 10:18 a.m.

Current and former Nevada Test Site workers may be eligible for compensation for illnesses caused by exposure to beryillium and other toxic substances while testing nuclear weapons.

The Department of Energy for the first time admitted Thursday that nuclear weapons production over the past 50 years harmed contract workers and promised to compensate them, including those at the Test Site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

President Clinton will request legislation from Congress soon to give benefits to DOE employees who worked for government contractors and who suffered from the poisonous effects of beryllium, a gray metallic substance used in nuclear weapons and in their guidance systems.

"I am reversing a policy of denying compensation," Energy Secretary Bill Richardson said Thursday afternoon at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.

Beryllium is used in a nuclear warhead's guidance system and there is a clear-cut cause and effect relationship to occupational illness, DOE spokeswoman Nancy Harkess said from the Nevada Operations Office. Most compensation claims are expected from Oak Ridge, Fernald, Ohio, and Rocky Flats, Colo., where nuclear weapons components were produced.

Test Site workers may have been exposed to it during nuclear weapons experiments above and below the Nevada desert's surface, she said. U.S. nuclear weapons testing ended in September 1992.

The DOE said an estimated 20,000 workers had been or are being exposed to beryillium and between 500 and 1,000 were affected by it. The DOE is seeking $13 million a year for the compensation program.

The president also established a task force to look at occupational illnesses among Cold War warriors from exposure to asbestos, mercury, uranium and other toxins. A report is expected in March.

Meanwhile, studies are under way in Nevada. The DOE and Boston University's School of Public Health are screening Test Site workers who volunteer for physical examinations that include chest X-rays, sight and hearing tests and blood work, Harkess said.

So far 390 workers have volunteered to be examined and another three screenings will be scheduled. If symptoms relating to dangerous substances in the workplace emerge, workers may apply for compensation, she said.

Government contractors were never covered by the federal government, and thus their employees could not ask for aid, Harkess said. Each state's compensation benefits varied from some benefits to none at all, she said.

"Traditionally, the DOE has fought against workers' claims," Harkess said. "Now we want to help workers. It's part of doing the right thing."