NTS workers may get compensation

Monday, Jan. 31, 2000 | 11:30 a.m.

Screenings

More screenings will be held for former and current Test Site workers March 2-4 in Las Vegas. For more information or to make appointments, call Sandi Medina of the Southern Nevada Construction Trades at 636-8777 or 888-636-8161.

A draft report linking nuclear weapons production to workers' illnesses that reversed decades of government denial may include compensation for some Nevada Test Site employees.

The Test Site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is not included in the draft, but Energy Department spokeswoman Nancy Harkess said it could be included by the time the final report is approved, making some Nevada workers eligible for compensation.

Test Site workers have volunteered for medical screening for the last two years. Doctors have discovered lung scars that may be caused by exposure to beryllium, a metal dust, or to silica from dust in the Test Site's tunnels where underground nuclear experiments were conducted from 1963 to 1992.

If the lung spots are related to beryllium or silica exposure while workers were employed at the Test Site, the workers could be eligible for compensation, Harkess said Sunday. She noted that no radiation link had been discovered in Test Site workers.

The preliminary study by the White House National Economic Council reviewed scientific evidence of unusual illnesses among more than 600,000 people who worked at 14 nuclear weapons sites since the mid-1940s.

The draft report, dated Jan. 14, said the records are spotty. Some studies of those with the highest exposures to radiation indicate no increase in cancers. However, the panel said there is enough evidence of increased health risks from radiation, chemical and physical hazards to warrant a fresh look at compensation.

Some epidemiological studies from the 1960s to 1992 when nuclear weapons experiments stopped noted elevated cancer rates among workers exposed to radiation. The report said 288 deaths per 100,000 exposed persons -- an excess of 1 percent to 3 percent -- could be related to DOE work.

Chemical exposures are not well documented, the report said. The council discovered 40,000 possible toxins, including solvents and degreasers used as sites across the country.

In July President Clinton ordered a review of the evidence after former workers complained of illnesses ranging from lung cancer and leukemia to heart disease.

The final report is due in March. Then it could serve as the beginning of a national compensation program benefiting ailing nuclear workers, experts said.

The draft report does not define the compensation or what diseases it might cover.

But after the draft report appeared in the New York Times and the Washington Post over the weekend, critics said it did not go far enough.

Pat Broudy of California, whose husband, Charles, died after radiation exposures in Nagasaki, Japan, where the second atomic bomb was dropped, and at the Nevada Test Site in 1957, said she was pleased, but objected to those omitted from the report.

As a life member and spokeswoman for the National Association of Atomic Veterans, Broudy said she has been tracking thousands of documents that indicate the government knew about human radiation hazards as early as 1946.

The report, in addition to ignoring Test Site workers, failed to include those living in the path of radioactive fallout from the Test Site and the military personnel who marched to within three miles of nuclear blasts, she said.

Robert Campbell, president of the Atomic Veterans Radiation Research Institute, Inc. of Maine, said that he had 200 death certificates of Test Site workers showing half from cancer. "The average age at death is 60 years," Campbell said.

None of the death certificates contain information about an individual's radiation exposure or how long they worked at the Test Site, Campbell said. Most of the deaths were the result of lung cancer or leukemia, records show.

"This is an area, which needs much investigation," Campbell said. The nuclear workers spent far longer periods of time at the Test Site and may have passed genetic defects on to their children, he added.

"Too many have suffered and been denied medical care, to say nothing of just compensation," Campbell said. "Now is the time to put things right."

In 1994 a lawsuit by six former Test Site workers was dismissed in federal court.

Keith Prescott, Joe Carter, Harry Geisler, Eugene Haynes, Hugh Moseley and Calvin Tuck filed the suit in 1979. Carter and Moseley did not have a history of smoking, but the government blamed the men's cancers on their lifestyles, not exposure to radiation at their Test Site jobs.

The six workers were part of a class-action lawsuit that included more than 200 others.