Former Test Site workers tell DOE how they’ve been hurt

Monday, Feb. 28, 2000 | 11:18 a.m.

Screenings

The Southern Nevada Building and Construction Trades Council is offering free medical screenings to Nevada Test Site workers, Sandie Medina, union project manager, said.

The Boston University School of Public Health and the University of California, San Francisco, are conducting the free screenings Thursday, Friday and Saturday, and workers may be eligible for checkups. Screenings are held four times a year.

Contact Medina at:

Billy Joe McCown recalls seeing men in white protective suits coming down the back roads of the Nevada Test Site "like a bunch of ghosts" with Geiger counters "just chattering" as invisible radiation fell.

The former Test Site employee told a packed auditorium about how after being exposed to radiation during a nuclear test, he was stripped of his clothes, shoes and driver's license and forced to shower for 24 hours. Without his work clothes, which were contaminated, he said, McCown drove back to Las Vegas in paper shoes and paper clothes.

"I want the government to stop telling us all these lies," he said.

McCown was one of 52 current and former Test Site workers who related tale after similar tale during a daylong hearing on exposure at the Test Site.

After the hearing, Nevada's congressional delegation said they were ready to fight for compensation for the men and women exposed to radiation and toxic chemicals 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

"My role is to try to get protection for the people who work at the Nevada Test Site," Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., the Senate's minority whip, told the Sun after the hearing. Reid and the rest of Nevada's congressional delegation were outraged when the Test Site workers were not included in any proposed legislation to compensate the nation's nuclear weapons workers.

More than 250 workers, their families and widows, lined the lobby of the Department of Energy's Nevada Operations Office by 8:15 a.m. Friday. The hearing, scheduled to begin at 9 a.m., was delayed 20 minutes as workers struggled to reach the auditorium.

Some men and women arrived in wheelchairs or dragging oxygen tanks as they gasped for breath. Some hobbled to the microphone on canes, crutches or walkers.

Many talked for the first time publicly about their exposure to radiation, dust and asbestos as well as toxic solvents and diesel fumes.

All of them, while they worked at the Test Site, had signed papers saying they would not reveal what happened at the proving ground for U.S. and British nuclear weapons experiments from 1951 until 1992.

"I have never smoked in my life," said Wayne Cates from his wheelchair. "I have always worked out. It is very embarrassing for me now."

A former iron worker with lung disease caused by exposure to dust, Cates said doctors have given him five years to live. He said he hopes to spend the time with his first grandson.

Pete Sandoval has a spot in his lung the size of a quarter. As a tunnel worker, he was exposed to fine sand, asbestos and radiation in his work recovering equipment after nuclear experiments.

Mud and steam spewing from cracks in the earth after a nuclear explosion covered the workers, Sandoval said.

"We were exposed to a lot we didn't know about," he said.

Sandoval may never know. His complete exposure records are lost.

Richard Hall began work as a laborer and miner at the Test Site in 1962, and on Jan. 26, 1978, he was injured on the job. He receives less than $800 a month for his disability and he is losing his hearing.

"We are concerned not only for ourselves, but for our families as well," Hall said. "I never had any problems with my body until I got hurt up there."

When asked who had hearing loss, most of those in the packed auditorium raised their hands.

Dr. David Michaels, an epidemiologist who serves as the DOE's assistant secretary for the Office of Environment, Safety and Health, said noise levels cause deafness among miners, but there is no compensation for hearing loss among DOE workers.

At seven previous hearings Michaels said complaints from DOE workers have revealed a pattern of problems ranging from hearing loss to toxic chemical exposures. His job is to investigate every possible illness.

"We are grateful for all of your work," Michaels said. "Many of you in this room are heroes."

Although the danger of the dust from the heavy metal beryllium prompted expanded protection for workers in Paducah, Ky., and Oak Ridge, Tenn. -- but not at the Test Site -- Michaels said President Clinton has asked for a full-scale investigation of all DOE sites and a report on those findings by March 31.

The supervisors at the Test Site are not to blame for workers' ills, former EG&G Energy Measurements Inc. photographer Al O'Donnell said. "We did everything to protect the workers as we armed, wired and fired the weapons. Don't blame the scientists, blame the government."

Sen. Richard Bryan, D-Nev., said many Test Site employees were unknowingly exposed to hazardous materials and radiation.

"These patriots deserve the same recognition and compensation that has been put forth for their counterparts in Kentucky and Tennessee," he said in a statement as the Senate continued business on Friday.

Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., who sat beside Michaels at the hearing, expressed her outrage that the Test Site workers had been ignored so long.

"Maybe because they worked here, in a small state with a big desert, they've been forgotten or somehow demoted to second-class citizenship," she said. "And that is wrong."

Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., said in a statement that Test Site workers deserved more than "the short shrift" the DOE had handed them.

Occupational health specialist Dr. Robert Harrison of the University of California, San Francisco, one of the doctors conducting medical screening of Test Site workers, said the federal government needs to create a fair criteria for compensation so workers across the nation can get justice.

But Test Site miner Phillip Spencer, suffering from hearing loss and asbestos in his lungs, saw a ray of hope.

"These miners went through total, total, total hell," he said. "But for once in my life, I believe the DOE is trying to do something."