New rules on Flats aid

Posting follows 2 years of talks; questions linger

By Laura Frank, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Matt McClain / The Rocky

Shelby Hallmark, Labor Department assistant secretary who oversees compensation programs, said he doesn't expect the new rules to greatly expand special-status numbers.

Federal officials are still at odds over which ill Rocky Flats workers deserve a streamlined path to financial aid for cancer linked to building atomic weapons.

On Tuesday, the Labor Department posted new rules, which say a person must prove he or she was exposed to a "significant" level of neutron radiation to get on the fast track for money and medical help.

The rule follows two years of discussions among the three main agencies overseeing the compensation effort - the U.S. Departments of Labor and Health and Human Services, and the Presidential Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health.

Not everyone is pleased, however.

On Wednesday, Mark Griffon, head of the Rocky Flats working group, a subgroup of the Presidential Advisory Board, said the new rules weren't what the board had intended.

Griffon said the Rocky Flats group would get together before the board meeting in April to vote on what to do next.

"We might have a case where we'd have to go to the Justice Department for a tie-break," said Shelby Hallmark, the Labor Department assistant secretary who oversees compensation programs, including the one created by Congress for nuclear weapons workers.

As of this week, the program has awarded $1 billion to sick nuclear workers or their survivors nationwide since its creation in 2000.

Most workers must prove a link between toxic exposures and their illnesses, which can take years.

But if records are missing or faulty, they can petition for "special exposure cohort" status, which makes them eligible for streamlined aid.

The matter was supposed to have been settled in August, when Labor, Health and Human Services and advisory board officials agreed that reliable records didn't exist to show how much neutron radiation, a particularly dangerous form, workers had absorbed in the early years of Rocky Flats.

They concluded, however, that only a small group at Rocky Flats deserved special status for aid.

That group was defined as people who worked there between 1952 and 1966 and "were or should have been monitored for neutron radiation."

To date, 159 Flats workers have been awarded special status. Hallmark said he doesn't expect the new rules to add large numbers to that group.

The Labor Department originally listed nine buildings at the now-demolished site where workers could have been exposed to neutron radiation, but weren't properly monitored.

After complaints from workers, the Labor Department added the top-secret Building 881 to the list.

Then, in November, the Rocky Mountain News reported that data collected for a University of Colorado study showed that more than 3,000 workers assigned to 19 additional buildings were at risk of exposure to neutron radiation.

None of those buildings was on the special-status list.

Since then, the Labor Department and Health and Human Services have been arguing over how to determine whether more workers deserve special status. That led to Tuesday's rule.

Griffon said that decision should be revisited in light of the information about radiation exposure for workers assigned to the 19 unlisted buildings.

He said he hoped the board would write some sort of clarification but was unsure of how the matter would proceed.

"I'd say we have to assume someone could have been exposed unless there's strong evidence to prove they were never in any of these buildings," Griffon said.

If the advisory board persuades the secretary of health to amend or clarify his position, it's not clear how the Labor Department would react, Hallmark said.

"They haven't ever done that," Hallmark said.

frankl@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5091