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Congress backs ill Flats workers
By Ann Imse, Rocky Mountain News
October 9, 2004
Sick nuclear weapons workers from Rocky Flats and other plants scored a victory Friday when Congress voted to overhaul a program that has managed to pay only 31 of them while spending $95 million on paperwork.
About 1,700 former Rocky Flats workers are awaiting action. Only one worker sickened while working at the weapons plant outside Denver has been paid.
"I'm just ecstatic they could agree on this," said Terrie Barrie of Craig. Her husband, George, came down with 30 ailments after inhaling and ingesting plutonium at Rocky Flats. She has been a leader in the nationwide network of weapons workers and relatives fighting for reform.
A House-Senate conference committee decided to change administrators of the program and to provide direct federal funding to pay the workers. The overhaul, contained in the military spending bill, is expected to win final approval and be on the president's desk by Sunday.
"The Cold War warriors and heroes at Rocky Flats handled some of the most deadly substances known to man, and, as a result, some incurred cancers and other life-threatening diseases," said Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., a member of the conference committee who helped hammer out the compromise.
"They were being tripped up by an endless series of bureaucratic hurdles," Allard said. "They've waited long enough."
Congress created the program in 2000 to help atom bomb makers sickened by exposure to radiation and toxic chemicals on the job. The Department of Energy was placed in charge of half of the program. In four years, DOE saw only 31 of its 25,000 applicants paid.To accomplish that, DOE spent $95 million. A federal auditor found DOE improperly hired a computer company to process medical claims. That company, Science & Engineering Associates, now called Apogen, in turn charged the government $35 an hour for mail clerks and $87.84 an hour for nurses that it called "senior management analysts." The auditor found the company never bid on providing such personnel.
The reform approved Friday transfers the program from DOE to the Department of Labor, which has years of experience in running workers compensation programs, and already runs the successful half of the program.
Officials still must collect records of illness and exposure to radiation and toxic chemicals, and decide if that caused the workers' illnesses.
But under the original program, workers merely won the right to fight insurers and employers for workers compensation, often in court.
Now, they will be paid by the Department of Labor under a new national formula.
Under the sliding scale, a worker with 50 percent impairment would receive $125,000 and would get another $50,000 if he or she was unable to work at 50 percent of pre-illness wages for five years. Ill workers could receive a maximum of $250,000 under this program, and possibly $150,000 under a separate Labor program.
"That's exactly what the workers needed. That's just what we've been working for," Terrie Barrie said. "It feels wonderful. I'm so glad it's done."
Many of the workers became ill when they were young and have enormous medical bills.
Allard said he worked with sponsor Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., to hammer out a compromise between the House and Senate.
The bill had bipartisan support but was opposed by the Bush administration, which insisted that the expensive DOE computer program was now working and capable of handling the backlog of applications.
Rep. Mark Udall, D-Boulder, long supported the reform, and Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, led an investigation into DOE's mismanagement.
Among other things, DOE spent $4.8 million on a computer system when its own consultant said a $50,000 version would have done just fine. The same consultant went on for 28 pages about everything the computer company was doing wrong in processing the workers' claims.
In contrast, Labor was told to pay $150,000 each to victims of three specified job-caused illnesses, including cancer. In the same four years, Labor has paid $910 million on behalf of 12,000 workers.
Sick workers remain worried that the government will refuse to admit they were sickened by the job, because radiation exposure records are missing, sketchy or wrong.
"I don't believe until I get paid," said Wally Gulden of Arvada, who at 66 is dying of lymphoma that he blames on exposure to plutonium at Rocky Flats. "I was a Cold War veteran. I don't trust the government any more."
Key points of the new program
• Workers must prove the illness was caused by exposure to radiation or toxic chemicals while they were working on atom bombs.
• Spouses and children who were minors at the time of death can collect $125,000.
• Workers permanently impaired by their illnesses will receive $2,500 for every percentage point of impairment, as decided by the Department of Labor.
• Benefits under this program are capped at $250,000.
• If their ability to work was limited by the ailment, they will receive $10,000 for each year before age 65 in which the illness prevented them from earning 75 percent of their pre-illness wage.
• If they earn less than 50 percent of their pre-illness wage, they can collect $15,000 for each such year.
• Workers who qualify may also collect the flat $150,000 paid by the Department of the Labor for certain cancers, beryllium disease and silicosis.
Source: Senate Offices Of Wayne Allard And Jim Bunning
Silicosis suit moves north out of Madison County to Dairy State
Wednesday, August 24, 2005
By Steve Korris
Madison County Circuit Judge Andy Matoesian has sent a silicosis lawsuit filed by a Mount Vernon man who was exposed in Brillion, Wisc. out of the land of Lincoln north to the dairy state of Wisconsin.
Matoesian, after an Aug. 24 hearing, dismissed all defendants but one from a suit that Gary Dille filed in 2003 against 39 defendants.
3M Corporation was not dismissed.
Matoesian said Dille could sue the rest of the defendants in Wisconsin, either in Brown County or Calumet County.
Dille claimed that he developed silicosis while working at Brillion Iron Works in Brillion from 1966 to 2001.
Silicosis affects those who inhale sand or glass particles.
In Dille's case, some defendants settled. Some moved to dismiss.
Others moved to transfer to Jefferson County where he resides, and some to Brown County, Wisc.--where Green Bay is county seat-- and others still to Calumet County, Wisc.--where Kiel--20 miles south of Green Bay--is county seat.
In a July 28 response to transfer motions, attorney Clay Fostel of Houston, representing Dille, wrote that several defendants did business in Madison County.
He wrote that 3M sold products in Madison County, but said the case had no connection to Brown County, Wisc.
Attorney Francis X. Duda of St. Louis, representing American Colloid Company, argued for transfer in an Aug. 10 memorandum.
Duda wrote, "Plaintiffs give no reason, other than the fact that Madison County is experienced in handling 'toxic tort' cases, why this is the more proper forum for the hearing of this matter than the home county of the defendant, or the county where the injury occurred."
Dille maintains a residence in Wisconsin as well as Illinois, Duda wrote.
At the hearing, attorney John Carlson of Edwardsville appeared for Dille.
Attorney John Walker of St. Louis appeared for Unimin Corporation; attorney Virginia Giokaris of Kansas City, Mo. appeared for Louis M. Gerson Company.
Federal lawmakers call on nuclear workers advisory board to grant ‘justice’ to Bethlehem Steel workers
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Representatives Brian Higgins, Louise Slaughter, and Thomas Reynolds and Senators Charles Schumer and Hillary Clinton Thursday called on the Advisory Board on Radiation and Workers Health to recommend approval of the petition by former Bethlehem Steel workers to create a “Special Exposure Cohort” for those who worked in Bethlehem Steel’s nuclear weapons program during the Cold War.
Approval of this petition would make the former nuclear workers eligible to receive compensation under the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program if exposure records do not allow case-by-case decisions to be made.
Under the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act, those who performed weapons work during World War II and the Cold War who subsequently contracted radioactive cancer, beryllium disease or chronic silicosis are eligible to file claims with the US Department of Labor for individual payments of $150,000, as well as medical benefits. Patients or their surviving families were required to provide proper documentation of their illness and their employment history in order to file a claim.
Payment of these claims is decided by the DOL and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health by using available records about work conditions and employment history to perform a “dose reconstruction process” to determine both the radiation doses received by employees and whether or not radiation exposure was the cause of the employees’ illness. However, at certain facilities, such as Bethlehem Steel, workers did not wear individual radiation monitors. Compensation decisions have been made for these workers using a radiation exposure model that relies on data from another facility—the Simonds Saw facility in Lockport, New York. Subsequent studies have shown this dose reconstruction process to be a grossly inadequate measure of these workers’ radiation exposure.
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