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Department of Energy employees could be entitled to up to $150,000
ALBUQUERQUE (AP) _ President Bush has appointed a former Holloman Air Force Base commander to the commission that will determine military base closings.
April 5, 2005 - Department of Energy employees, contractors, subcontractors or their survivors may be entitled to up to $150,000 for having suffered an illness as a result of employment at a DOE facility.
Karen Martinez, manager for the Espa?la-based Energy Employees Compensation Resource Center will be in Alamogordo on Wednesday to meet with citizens with questions about the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act.
Workers may receive medical benefits and/or financial compensation and survivors could be eligible for compensation through the act. Covered illnesses include radiaogenic cancer, chronic beryllium disease, and silicosis, Martinez said. Uranium workers can also be covered. Survivors can apply on behalf of the employee.
Twenty-two kinds of cancer could be covered, Martinez said. They include leukemia, lung cancer, bone cancer, multiple myeloma, thyroid, breast, pancreas and ovarian. The program has given out more than $55 million in New Mexico and $1 billion nationwide so far, Martinez said.
I think there is a lot (more people affected) because we are going back to the 1940s,·Martinez said.
Historically I don't believe anyone from the resource center has gone to Alamogordo. Appointments for Martinez? Otero County visit will be held at the CAPPED Building at 907 New York Ave. For an appointment call the Resource Center toll free at 1-866-272-3622. Hours the representative will be meeting people in Alamogordo are 10 a.m.-2 p.m.
Staff members at the center are available for questions and to assist individuals with the application process, so even if a Wednesday appointment can't be made, those interested in finding more about the claims can call the Resource Center.
DOE facilities in New Mexico:
·Accurate Machine & Tool in Albuquerque (1987-2002)
·Albuquerque Operations Office (1942-present)
·Chupadera Mesa (1945)
·Los Alamos Medical Center (1952-1963)
·Los Alamos National Laboratory (1942-present)
·Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute in
Albuquerque (1960-present)
·Ore Buying Station in Grants (1956-1958)
·Ore Buying Station in Shiprock (1952-1954)
·Project Gasbuggy Nuclear Explosion Site (1967-1973; 1978; 1992-present in Farmington (remediation))
·Project Gnome Nuclear Explosion Site in Carlsbad
(1960-1962)
·Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque
(1949-present)
·South Albuquerque Works (1951-1967)
·Trinity Nuclear Explosion Site in White Sands (1945)
·Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Carlsbad (1999-present)
Staff writer Joan Price contributed to this report.
Poor conditions increase illness at work
By Zhan Lisheng (China Daily)
2005-08-10 - By GUANGZHOU: Lying on his bed in a Hospital for industrial diseases in the city, 35-year-old Long Zhengjin still feels his breathing is abnormal.
Diagnosed with pneumoconiosis, Long was hospitalized late last week.
"I began to feel short of breath earlier this year, when I tried to go faster at work. I found it very difficult to breathe. The symptoms became increasingly serious," he told China Daily yesterday.
For the last four years Long has been a metal worker at a private firm in Foshan's Sanshui District in the Pearl River Delta region. X-rays show that his lungs contain a large amount of microscopic particulates.
"Several of my co-workers have the same symptoms as me," he said. "The ventilation system at the plant is poor, and we don't wear any respirators."
Long's case is far from unusual. Because of a poor working environment and a lack of either employers' protective measures or employees' health and safety awareness, the problem of occupational disease across China is a serious one.
At a seminar on health and safety at work held on Monday in Guangzhou, experts said solvent toxicosis, silicosis and pneumoconiosis are now major occupational diseases in Guangdong Province. More than 6 million people within the province are still working in toxic or harmful conditions.
According to Jiang Chaoqiang, a professor with the Guangzhou Occupational Disease Prevention Hospital, cases related to solvent toxicosis make up 62 per cent of occupational disease cases, compared with a mere 2 per cent just a decade ago.
The professor blamed the rampancy of occupational diseases on several factors: inadequate law enforcement by local governments, poor ventilation in the workplace, excessively long working hours, a lack of protective equipment and the almost non-existence of health and safety training programmes.
Citing the findings of a recent survey, Jiang said, many enterprises - including joint ventures and private enterprises, especially smaller ones - have neglected the importance of preventive measures. He urged that the situation be reversed soon to minimize the risk of occupational disease.
In the survey, 955 out of the 965 enterprises questioned had yet to institute effective health and safety measures, and about 80 per cent of the workplaces were deemed to be harmful to health with inadequate protective equipment.
Jiang said that regular physical examinations will be necessary for those working under harmful conditions, and that the local governments should step up their monitoring of the implementation of the State's occupational disease prevention law.
In 2004, around 3 million workers in Guangdong received physical examinations, with occupational diseases being diagnosed in about 30,000, or 1 per cent of them.
According to Yang Ping, an executive with the Guangzhou Disease Prevention Association, the provincial capital of Guangzhou is aiming to keep the occupational disease rate below 0.05 per cent and halve the number of unexpected occupational toxicosis cases in the coming decade.
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