Workers Inhaled Uranium for Years

[Susan Gawarecki <loc@icx.net>]

Workers Inhaled Uranium for Years
May 26, 2000 

By KATHERINE RIZZO
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) via NewsEdge Corporation - 

Workers at a government uranium-processing
plant in southern Ohio routinely inhaled uranium
dust, arsenic and other poisons for decades
because supervisors did not require them to
wear respirators, the Energy Department said
Thursday. 

In the second of a series of reports on worker
exposure both now and during the Cold War
years, when safety standards were lower, the
department documented worker exposure to
plutonium-laced uranium, asbestos and an array
of chemicals at the Portsmouth Gaseous
Diffusion Plant in Piketon, Ohio. 

``I think we may have a huge national problem
on our hands,'' said Rep. Ted Strickland, a
Democrat whose district includes the plant. 

He and other lawmakers said the report would
buttress efforts to get Congress to approve
compensation for workers whose health was
ruined by exposure to contamination at Piketon
and other government weapons plants. 

``This gives us ammunition to go to our
colleagues and say the federal government
messed up. The federal government was
negligent. The federal government hurt people,''
said Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio. 

Energy Secretary Bill Richardson wants to give
lifetime health coverage or $100,000 to every
weapons-plant worker who contracted beryllium
disease or radiation-caused cancer. 

Lawmakers representing the stricken workers
want to make that at least $200,000 and also
include workers harmed by chemical
contamination. But they've had little luck
convincing their colleagues to authorize what
essentially would be a blank check for an
unknown number of victims. In the first
investigation of its type, at the Paducah
Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Kentucky, the
department found workers were exposed to high
levels of radiation and chemical contamination,
and found the potential for a serious accident
involving radioactive materials. 

There was no similar finding of a potential
``criticality accident'' at Paducah's sister plant
in Ohio, said Assistant Energy Secretary David
Michaels. 

The investigators also documented significant
lingering contamination of the water and ground
outside the Paducah plant but only onsite
contamination at Portsmouth, Michaels said. 

The investigative team already is at work on its
third probe, at the nation's only other gaseous
diffusion plant, in Oak Ridge, Tenn. Michaels said
no similar examinations of past practices were
planned for other segments of the nuclear
weapons complex. 

The report cited shortcomings with Portsmouth's
current safety program but said there was no
immediate risk to workers or the public.
-- 
==================================================
Susan L. Gawarecki, Ph.D., Executive Director
Oak Ridge Reservation Local Oversight Committee, Inc.
136 S Illinois Ave, Ste 208, Oak Ridge, TN 37830
Phone (865) 483-1333; Fax (865) 482-6572; E-mail loc@icx.net 
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