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Feds to take another look at help for Flats workers

By Laura Frank, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published November 22, 2007 at 12:30 a.m.

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Jennifer Thompson, an advocate for ill Rocky Flats workers, prepares to send documents on a compensation dispute to the government last week. The documents ask officials to reconsider denials of aid to workers with cancer.

Photo by Linda McConnell © Special to the Rocky

Jennifer Thompson, an advocate for ill Rocky Flats workers, prepares to send documents on a compensation dispute to the government last week. The documents ask officials to reconsider denials of aid to workers with cancer.

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Federal officials say they may have wrongly denied compensation to Cold War-era Rocky Flats workers who likely developed cancer from their top-secret, bomb-building jobs.

But some may get another shot at help.

Next week, federal officials will begin studying whether thousands of ill workers at the former nuclear weapons plant should be included in a program meant to speed up compensation. Others will be reworking claims of hundreds more whose applications for help were denied.

"This just shows you how flawed the whole program is," said Tony DeMaiori, who still tries to help the Rocky Flats workers he once represented as president of the local Steelworkers union. "Now, the government and its contractors will be making more profit on the sick nuclear workers when they have to redo everything."

In recent weeks there has been increasing criticism of the compensation program by members of Congress, including Colorado Sens. Wayne Allard and Ken Salazar. They are among former workers and politicians who say the effort to help sick workers has become bogged down in red tape.

Congress created the aid program seven years ago in the face of mounting scientific evidence that the Cold War push to build atomic weapons harmed workers' health. Ill workers with certain cancers are eligible for $150,000 and medical coverage.

They can get aid in two ways: either by proving that exposure to radiation likely caused their ailments, a process that averages nearly three years; or, if the government agrees that available records are too faulty to prove anything, they are put on a fast track and automatically get help for cancers with known links to radiation.

The U.S. Labor Department, which oversees the compensation program, is reopening the cases of 427 workers who were denied aid because government calculations may have wrongly suggested their exposures weren't high enough to cause their cancers. The process of making those calculations is called "dose reconstruction."

"To my knowledge, all the cases that were denied through dose reconstruction need to be reopened, because there were multiple changes to the procedures," said Shelby Hallmark, who oversees the program as director of the department's Office of Workers Compensation Programs.

Those changes have come as scientists from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, or NIOSH, continue to discover problems with some of the information they've previously used to estimate workers' radiation doses.

The Rocky Flats workers say the large number of do-overs shows that the government should have granted access to streamlined aid for all Flats workers.

The problem isn't unique to Rocky Flats. The same thing is occurring at nuclear weapons production sites across the nation. In all, the Labor Department has returned more than 4,400 cases to NIOSH because scientists keep changing the way they calculate radiation doses.

The other major issue for Rocky Flats will be the subject of a meeting Monday by members of a White House advisory board set up to determine who deserves automatic compensation. Panel members will discuss whether workers from 19 buildings at the now-demolished site northwest of Denver should have been included on a list of those eligible for streamlined aid.

Earlier this month, the Rocky Mountain News reported that data showed dangerous neutron radiation was detected on workers from those buildings during the early days of the Cold War. That, according to the rules, should have earned more than 3,000 people a chance at streamlined compensation if they have one of 22 cancers presumed linked to the site.

Earlier this month, more than 800 former Flats workers from yet another building were added to the list of those eligible for fast-track help after it was determined that they were mistakenly left off. The move triggered a squabble between NIOSH and Labor Department officials, who blamed each other for the oversight.

And it added to the frustration of lawmakers who lately have bombarded Labor Secretary Elaine Chao with letters asking for improvements to the program.

The 800 workers are "only a small portion of Rocky Flats workers who deserve to be covered," said a letter signed by Sen. Salazar and Reps. Mark Udall, John Salazar and Ed Perlmutter, all Democrats.

And last week, Allard asked Chao what her department was doing to ensure ill Flats workers who deserved aid got it.

"The fact that these questions and many others remain suggests a lack of oversight that our government must address," the Republican senator wrote.

More information

Nuclear weapons workers who believe their jobs made them ill can apply for compensation of $150,000 and medical coverage. Contact the U.S. Department of Labor at 866-888-3322.

Comments

  • November 22, 2007

    1:30 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    tb writes:

    Kudos again to Laura Frank and the Rocky Mountain News for covering the problems that Rocky Flats and other sick nuclear weapons workers face in getting the compensation for their diseases. The workers are fortunate in having the Colorado Congressional delegation behind them.

    The print version of this article said the on-line article had a listing of the 19 buildings that were omitted from the workers who are covered under the SEC. I cannot find it. Could you please post.