Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Ailing workers from Test Site get chance to face DOE

Test site hearing

Current and former Nevada Test Site workers and their families are invited to a hearing at 9 a.m. Friday at the DOE's Nevada Operations Office, Great Basin Room, 232 Energy Way, North Las Vegas, to tell stories of their illnesses. DOE officials will stay until everyone has had a chance to testify.

When Fred Love flew security missions in a helicopter at the Nevada Test Site in 1985 and 1986, he was prepared to guard with his life the secrets of the nuclear weapons experiments detonated there.

They ended up costing him his career.

At 47, ready to leave his DOE contract position, Love planned to begin flying commercial helicopters. Then he started having trouble with his right eye and lost his unrestricted pilot's license.

In March 1997 doctors removed the eye along with a tumor, a rare form of cancer that is associated with radiation exposure.

"At the same time I lost my eye, I lost my flying career," Love, now 60, said. Love plans to tell his story about his time at the Test Site at a DOE hearing scheduled for Friday in North Las Vegas.

When Love discovered that the Test Site was not included as part of the Clinton administration's effort to compensate DOE workers, he contacted Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Las Vegas.

The proposed legislation currently would compensate ill workers at the DOE's Oak Ridge, Tenn., and Paducah, Ky., facilities.

"To me, it is a simple matter," Love said. "The United States government cannot discriminate between states. It would be akin to such a statement as, 'If you live in Mississippi, you do not qualify for Social Security.' "

For David Michaels, the DOE's assistant secretary for environment, safety and health, a series of hearings across the country has revealed deep-rooted secrecy cloaking what happened to nuclear weapons workers.

Workers were not told and were not aware of potential exposures to radiation and toxic chemicals at places such as the Test Site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, where the federal government exploded nuclear weapons above and below ground from 1951 until 1992, Michaels said.

An epidemiologist who has taken a leave of absence as community health professor at the City University of New York to serve with the DOE, Michaels is trained to spot patterns and trends from illnesses affecting people.

Although medical doctors warned top government administrators in nuclear weaponry that their employees were at risk from exposures in their workplace in the late 1940s, the government masked that knowledge behind the blanket of national security. Michaels said he is trying to cut through the secrecy and listen to workers' stories.

"People tell of working in secrecy, really being kept in the dark about their working conditions," Michaels told the Sun in a telephone interview Tuesday.

Last year President Clinton and Energy Secretary Bill Richardson decided to break the government's silence. They are trying to lead the DOE away from decades of denying harmful conditions to workers. In meetings nationwide that have drawn more than 2,000 current and former DOE workers, Michaels and his staff have heard 400 stories of exposures. One thousand other people have called a confidential hotline.

Those working to build and test nuclear weapons had nowhere to turn, no recourse until Richardson decided to listen to the stories of former workers such as Fred Love. Now the DOE is inviting current and former workers to tell administrators what they know.

The hearings have helped close the gap between the workers and the administration, Michaels said.

"We need the information," Michaels said. Without it, workers can get nothing from the president's proposed legislation.

The Clinton bill is the first step in the administration's efforts to help sick workers, Michaels said.

Congress is expected this year to consider the administration's proposal to give DOE workers suffering from beryllium-related disease access to the same benefits available to federal employees.

Beryllium, used as a reflector in the triggers of nuclear weapons to enhance the blast, could be in the lungs of Test Site workers who spent time in the underground tunnels, DOE spokeswoman Nancy Harkess said.

So while the Test Site is not included in the proposed legislation, strong testimony at Friday's hearing could help them receive compensation, if Congress approves.

Michaels and two of his staff members are coming to North Las Vegas because of more evidence of Test Site illnesses related to exposures to dust and beryllium.

Medical screenings show that the lungs of workers at the Test Site and other facilities contain spots from dust, an illness called silicosis, Michaels said.

Before Richardson tapped him for his role as assistant secretary, Michaels contributed to a 1992 report, "Dead Reckoning: A Critical Review of the Department of Energy's Epidemiologic Research."

Published by the national nuclear watchdog group Physicians for Social Responsibility, the report ended the DOE's failure to track diseases. In the early 1990s the National Institutes of Health took over studying nuclear workers.

Medical screenings have been done in Southern Nevada by the Building Trades Council with physicians trained in public and occupational health from San Francisco and Boston. There the traces of beryllium and dust exposure emerged.

Michaels said he has been struck by the consistency of DOE workers' stories. They tell about working conditions where the pressure to protect the United States from the Soviet Union's nuclear threat drove the work.

But he wants to hear more.

"I'm asking workers to come, just attend, even if they do not want to speak out," he said.

If they do not speak at the public hearing, Michaels said, the DOE will accept written comments or calls to a confidential toll-free number.

"Many workers come up to us at the hearings and ask to be heard individually," Michaels said. The DOE promises to listen to each and every one, he said.

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