DOE advocacy office to focus on radiation claims

Tuesday, May 2, 2000 | 11:06 a.m.

The U.S. Department of Energy has opened its advocacy office -- a big step toward reversing the longstanding policy of fighting compensation claims of workers who say they were poisoned by radiation.

David Michaels, assistant secretary of energy for environment, safety and health, said during a telephone news conference from Washington Monday that the advocacy office in the nation's capital is manned by a small staff that includes three advocates.

The opening of the advocacy center, officially called the Occupational Illness Compensation Office, is part of a plan announced by President Clinton last month to pay current and former nuclear weapons workers with certain cancers at least $100,000 in compensation.

It was the government's first acknowledgement of responsibility for decades of exposing workers to radiation and other unsafe working conditions while they built the nation's nuclear weapons arsenal. Among those in line for compensation are ailing Nevada Test Site workers.

"We will be focusing on cases of people who already have been seen by independent physicians," Michaels said, noting that he expects that in time many more people will come forward and all of their cases will have to be investigated.

The advocacy office is designed to speed up claims, using independent physicians to determine whether workers became ill from their jobs. If a link is made, the DOE will accept responsibility for the illness.

Workers or their survivors may choose between a lump-sum payment of $100,000 or a wait for a negotiated benefits package that could be much larger, which Congress must still approve.

Michaels said that while people can still pursue workers' compensation claims on their own, the advocacy office will assist them in filing the proper forms.

"In the past, the DOE has fought those claims," he said. "This office will work with claimants ... to make sure they get ... compensation."

The plan calls for DOE contractors not to oppose workers' health claims.

Michaels said potential claimants should go through one of several physician programs nationwide. Once a health status has been determined, they then can go through the advocacy office for assistance.

Michaels said in Las Vegas "several hundred patients" have been seen by physicians contracted by the DOE from Boston University and the University of California, San Francisco.

Parts of the compensation package will require congressional approval. Nevada's congressional delegation has said it will support the plan that will cost an estimated $400 million over the first five years.

More than 600,000 men and women at 16 major sites and dozens of smaller facilities around the nation built 70,000 nuclear warheads over 50 years. Workers have testified that they were exposed to radiation as well as hazardous chemicals such as solvents and the metal beryllium, which has been found to cause incurable lung cancer.

The DOE has estimated that about 3,000 former workers at nuclear weapons plants, or their families, may be eligible because of exposure to radiation in the 1950s through the '70s.

More than 400 workers from the Test Site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, attended hearings on the compensation plan in Southern Nevada in February.

Ed Koch is a reporter for the Sun. He can be reached at (702) 259-4090 or by e-mail at koch@lasvegassun.com