Ex-Test Site workers getting tested for beryllium

Thursday, March 8, 2001 | 8:59 a.m.

For more information about the screening program conducted four times a year in Las Vegas, contact Sandie Medina at (702)636-8777.

Medical experts began screening 215 former Nevada Test Site workers today for signs of exposure to beryllium dust while they were employed in a North Las Vegas machine shop and underground tunnels at the Test Site, where nuclear weapons once exploded.

Up to 100 of those workers undergoing screening might have been exposed to beryllium, a strong, lightweight but toxic metal used in the nuclear industry because it withstood high temperatures and conducted heat, health experts said.

Hundreds of Test Site workers have been screened for medical problems from radiation and dust particles. This is the first screening that will look specifically for exposure to beryllium, which can cause lung disease.

If evidence of beryllium exposure is found among the DOE workers, chronic lung disease from that exposure will become part of a compensation package proposed for former government workers and those employed by federal contractors at facilities such as the Test Site.

Last year Congress proposed to compensate thousands of government workers for hazards on the job. The Bush administration currently has the legislation under review.

Physicians from Boston University and the University of California, San Francisco are in Las Vegas today through Saturday to screen Test Site workers, said Sandie Medina, union program manager for the Nevada Test Site Medical Surveillance Project.

The U.S. Department of Energy is paying for the cost of the screening.

Scientists with the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration estimate that 30,000 workers in the United States come in contact with beryllium every day, because it is used in everything from light bulbs to nuclear weapons. OSHA is tracking beryllium exposure as a potential health hazard.

At the Test Site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, it was used in nuclear weapons parts, equipment placed in underground tunnels and in nuclear rocket experiments conducted in the southwest corner of the Test Site.

Up to 6 percent of the Test Site's workers from 1951 through 1992 could have a chronic form of the disease, experts estimate.

Among possible exposures was a nuclear rocket accident in June 1965 at the Test Site during the firing of Project Rover's Phoebus 1A rocket. Scientists are uncertain of the extent of the radioactive hazard and beryllium contamination as a result, a 1995 report by Raytheon Services said.

One nuclear rocket worker recalled, according to the report, "that accident in '65 ... when -- all of us had to pitch in on the cleanup, with tongs and suits, so that nobody would go over the radiation limit. Maybe 500 or 600 of us helped out with cleaning this up."

There is little information on soil, air or other samples from that year.

When ground up, manufactured, machined, modified, heated or combusted in fuel, beryllium dust and fumes can be highly toxic to the respiratory system, said Dr. Lee Newman, a national beryllium expert at the National Jewish Medical and Research Center in Denver.

There is no treatment for chronic beryllium disease at this time, but medical measures can be taken to prevent it from getting worse, the experts said.