[ RadSafe ] Clinton Takes on Uranium Inhalation Poisoners

[howard long]

The selected cancers in U processors exploited by Hillary (below) is inconsistent with the better documented data in "Is Chronic Radiation an Effective Prophylaxis Against Cancer" Chen, Luan et al (Taiwan Apts) www.aapsonline.org  Journal American Physicians and Surgeons spring 2004 pp6-10.
 
Howard Long

James Salsman <james at bovik.org> wrote:
http://villagevoice.com/news/0525,lombardi,65154,5.html

Stirring Up the Toxic Dust

They turned Uncle Sam's uranium into atom bombs, and the
work made them sick. Now they've got a new champion --
Hillary Clinton

by Kristen Lombardi
The Village Voice
June 21st, 2005

Eugene Ruchalski probably never dreamed he'd say anything
nice about Hillary Clinton. A lifelong Republican, he served
five proud terms as the highway superintendent in his
hometown of Boston Hills, a Buffalo suburb. At 68, and set
in his ways, he admits to entertaining conservative ideas
about what he calls "women in politics."

Yet lately, his opinion of New York's junior senator has
been changing. He counts himself among a select group of
Buffalo-area residents for whom Clinton has become a
crusader. Ruchalski's father was one of thousands of
employees exposed to radiation at 36 mills in western New
York. In his case, it was at the local Bethlehem Steel
plant, now defunct, in the late 1940s and early '50s. Many
of those workers got sick.

Now, when Ruchalski meets with the others, he hears about
all the work the senator is doing to bring his family
justice. "If she can deliver for us," he says, somewhat
sheepishly, "she can guarantee herself a vote." His.

Anyone wondering why Senator Clinton has gotten so popular
upstate, with positive numbers pushing 70 percent, need look
no further than the Bethlehem Steel families. Their lives
changed for good in 2000, when the federal government
admitted that workers in 350 mills nationwide had "rolled"
uranium to make nuclear bombs—but never knew it. On lunch
breaks at Bethlehem, they blithely sat around on piles of
the radioactive stuff, eating their sandwiches and inhaling
a deadly dust.

Under the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation
Program Act, created by Congress, retired workers who got
sick, or their survivors, could apply for a $150,000 payment
from the government. To date, 1,218 Bethlehem families have
filed claims with the Labor Department and the National
Institute of Occupational Health and Safety, the two
agencies that administer the program. The old Bethlehem
Steel plants—located in South Buffalo, Lackawanna, and
Hamburg—have drawn the most applications not only from New
York, but nationwide.

The response has not been great. Of the current claims, only
half, or 632, have made it through the first screening for
eligibility. Of those, up to 383 claims—more than 60
percent—have been denied.

"Obviously, the program is just not working for these
people," says Dan Utech, Clinton's main staffer on the
issue. This month, his boss plans to file a bill that would
make it easier for the families to collect. "The senator
believes it took too long for the government to accept
responsibility in the first place. Now, it's getting to be
ridiculous."

Clinton's role as champion for nuclear-weapons workers may
come as a surprise to those who remember her old ties to the
dreaded Wal-Mart. As Arkansas first lady, she served six
years on the board of the union-busting behemoth, notorious
during her directorship for alleged child labor abuses.
Wal-Mart has since become corporate enemy number one,
causing some Democrats to fear that Clinton's onetime
affiliation will scare away the labor vote if she makes a
bid for the White House in 2008.

But if her advocacy on Bethlehem Steel is any indication,
Clinton is now trying to build up a solid record of
defending worker rights—particularly when it comes to health
and safety. Jim Melius, of the Laborers Union, in Albany,
has followed the plight of these families for years now, and
he finds her work on their behalf telling. "It says that
she's willing to stand up and fight and try to fix the
problem." And because of her new bill, Melius adds, "The
story with Bethlehem isn't over."

That story began in 1949, at the start of the Cold War, when
the military was racing to make the atomic bomb. Mills and
foundries dominated the Buffalo landscape, yet one company
reigned supreme: Bethlehem Steel. Its facilities spanned
three miles along Lake Erie, with state-of-the-art equipment
and a workforce of 22,000.

"Everybody worked at the steel mill," says Frank Panasuk, a
retired detective from Hamburg. A large man with huge,
square-framed glasses, he drove to the old Bethlehem complex
on a recent Wednesday and along the way listed relatives who
worked there—his father, his father's five brothers, his
mother's five brothers.

Most of the 1,700-acre site sits vacant and weeded-over
today, abandoned when the company went belly-up in the '80s.
But the bar mill where workers rolled steel and, for four
years during the Cold War, uranium, still stands. Now a
galvanizing outfit, the building looks tired, its rusted
siding barely hanging on. Driving on a utility road, Panasuk
spots some workers toiling over a fire.

"Boy," he says, taking in the scene of power lines and
railroad tracks, "this brings back memories."

Not all of those memories are good. Panasuk's dad died in
1987, just weeks after developing stomach cancer. Before
that, he suffered from colon cancer. He spent his entire
career at the mill, serving as a metal inspector for 35
years. The tenure did Panasuk's dad proud; it has haunted
his family.

Ever since 2000, when the government came clean about its
atomic-weapons program, people have had to come to grips
with the weight of a decades-old secret at Bethlehem. From
1949 to 1952, the mill did contract work for the country's
fledgling nuclear arsenal, rolling billets of uranium into
rods for reactors. But few knew the true nature of the
project—and those who did had to keep quiet. All the while,
workers handled toxic material. They pressed it, shaped it,
ground it, and squeezed it, unwittingly.

Former employees and their families have had to face the
reality that the government exposed them to some of the most
dangerous matter on earth—"basically poisoned these folks,"
as one Clinton aide puts it.

At Bethlehem, as opposed to other facilities, the uranium
was especially deadly. According to former workers and
government officials, the company did nothing to control
radiation levels. Employees had no body suits to protect
them, no badges to monitor exposure. They didn't even have
masks. Worse still, they had to endure the constant presence
of uranium dust.

"For years I inhaled that dust," relays Russ Early, 81, a
Vernon Downs resident with a shock of white hair and a
feisty disposition. A cancer survivor, he operated a crane
in the bar mill, laboring there for 43 years, soaking up the
dust. It blurred his vision and scratched his throat. It
settled on his food and in his coffee. It got so hot it
could burn a blister on the skin the size of a silver dollar.

Now that the Bethlehem secret has been revealed, the dust
and its sting finally make sense to folks. And so do other
things. Like all the talk in the late '40s and early '50s of
a "government project" at the mill. Or the unexplained
sightings of guards watching over the rods. Or the army
trucks coming and going on weekends.

And then there are all those cancer deaths. Edwin Walker, a
genial 71-year-old from Lackawanna, held a Bethlehem post as
a bricklayer from 1951 to 1954, during the uranium project.
He was one of 15 men in the so-called "hot gang," the group
that patched holes in furnaces. Today, only he and one other
are still living. Everyone else was killed by cancer. Nor
have Walker and his colleague avoided the disease—he has
bladder cancer, his friend colon.

"I consider that more than a coincidence," he says. "We are
victims of the government's secrecy."

Walker and dozens more say the government is victimizing
them again—this time, by refusing to compensate them for
their illnesses. When the agencies set up the compensation
program, they presented the claims process as simple.
Bethlehem workers, or their survivors, could apply if they
worked at the mill during the uranium rollings and if they
got certain cancers—22 in all, including of the lungs, skin,
colon, and pancreas. In return, they'd get $150,000.

But it turns out the company didn't keep records of which
employees worked at the bar mill during the uranium
procedures, and the records it did keep are incomplete. As a
result, says Larry Elliott of the National Institute for
Occupational Safety and Health, the agency has had to
develop a formula, called "dose reconstruction," to evaluate
claims.

It's a complicated model, but here's the gist: NIOSH uses
software to predict a person's risk for developing cancer,
based on exposure. It takes into account such factors as the
radiation type, where the person worked, how long shifts
lasted, and so on. NIOSH relies on the few existing records
about the uranium work at Bethlehem, Elliott says, and the
formula skews toward the inhalation of uranium dust, thus
putting a premium on lung and kidney cancer, and leukemia.

Critics argue the formula is flawed. They say NIOSH doesn't
have enough information to accurately determine individual
dosages. When first creating the formula, officials failed
to interview retired employees or to visit the bar mill.
Instead, they substituted data from a neighboring mill, in
Lockport, New York.

"The model assumes that you can be precise about an
individual's exposure," says Melius, of the Laborers Union,
who sits on an advisory board overseeing the process. But
because of the minimal records, he explains, "It's an almost
impossible task to piece together."

The result? A lot of people have had their claims unfairly
denied—at least, that's what Early thinks. He handled the
uranium, and has suffered from rectal cancer for 17 years.
In 1987, he underwent surgery in which three tumors, his
appendix, and his gall bladder were removed. Yet he's been
denied compensation—twice.

"They said it wasn't bad enough," he says, referring to his
estimated dosage. Lifting his Hawaiian shirt and poking at
his colostomy bag, he asks, "See this? You call that not bad
enough?"

The denials have left people angry and bitter. Workers see
colleagues with lung cancer getting paid, while they,
diagnosed with other types, are not. They tell tales of
employees stationed in buildings far from the bar mill
receiving checks, all because they have lung or kidney cancer.

"It's wrong," says Walker, who has filed three claims, all
denied. "It's unjust, and the government should own up to it."

To that end, the families have formed two groups—the
Bethlehem Steel Radiation Victims and Survivors, and the
Bethlehem Steel Claimants Action Group— numbering some 300
members in total. They've taken their fight public,
protesting outside government offices, writing letters, and
making themselves a general pain for bureaucrats. Last year
they scored big when a 199-page audit found serious flaws in
NIOSH's system for evaluating their claims.

NIOSH's Elliott admits the audit has forced the agency to
review its ways. But he also insists the process is working.
"We've built a solid method," he argues, adding that none of
the 300-plus claims denied have been overturned on appeal.
"We're confident that we are not missing any claimant who
really deserves to be compensated."

Clinton's office has heard that line before, repeatedly,
since the senator first took up this crusade in 2003. She
got involved after her Buffalo staff began fielding calls
from constituents and she sent an aide to the Bethlehem
claimants' meetings. In December of that year she met them
herself at a special gathering in Hamburg.

There, she listened to 50 or so people recounting their
experiences. People like Theresa Sweeney, of Lackawanna,
whose husband died of pancreatic cancer, and who explained
the trouble she'd endured when administrators challenged the
legitimacy of her 30-year marriage. Or Cindy Mellody, of
South Buffalo, whose dad died of "probable lung carcinoma,"
and who told of the "huge injustice" of having her claim
denied. Her father served in World War II, got captured,
escaped, and hid in the jungle for two years; he returned to
New York only to get a job at a plant where the government
exposed him to uranium.

"These stories hit you up front," says the senator's western
New York regional director. The staffer says the senator was
so outraged she charged the Buffalo office with documenting
as many cases as possible. It now has a stack of about 200.

Early on, Clinton tried pressuring agency heads to fix
problems. In May 2003, for example, she pushed for a
provision calling for NIOSH and the Labor Department to file
a report with Congress, explaining the delays in processing
claims at Bethlehem, as well as other New York facilities.
The measure passed; the report has yet to be drafted.

Then came the letters. In December 2003, she wrote to
President Bush, calling on him to implement long-ignored
legal requirements that would help Bethlehem claimants. "The
longer the Administration delays," she wrote, the "more
workers will die without having their claim resolved."
Twelve months later, she issued a statement demanding NIOSH
review its methods. The NIOSH audit, she said, "clearly
indicates that claims that have been denied need to be
re-evaluated."

Last January, she wrote to the Labor Department, along with
Senator Chuck Schumer and western New York representatives,
demanding that Labor officials search harder for uranium
records at Bethlehem.

"She has been dogged in her oversight," says Richard Miller
of the Government Accountability Project in Washington,
D.C., which tracks the program. "It's not simply say one
thing and do another with her."

These days, Clinton has come to believe that the program is
broken, her staff says, and that legislation is the only way
to fix it. She's set to introduce a bill that would make it
easier for Bethlehem claimants to get paid. The measure
would set minimum standards for records needed to evaluate
claims. Under the bill, employees who did nuclear-weapons
work at plants without such records—as is the case at
Bethlehem—would join a "special exposure cohort."

That's a term in the original law, reserved for workers from
facilities where the government lacks basic information and
thus cannot reconstruct dosages. In effect, the bill would
order the government to presume that workers in this status
got cancer from radiation exposure and to pay them.

Because the measure mandates spending, Clinton's staff says,
it won't be attractive during a time of huge deficits and
tax cuts.

U.S. Congresswoman Louise Slaughter, of Niagara Falls, will
co-sponsor a House companion bill to Clinton's legislation,
and she predicts resistance. Yet Slaughter, who has worked
on this issue since the mid '90s, sees two advantages. For
one, its proposals amount to what she calls "basic decency."
For another, Hillary Clinton is on it. As she explains, "I
don't know what we'd do without her, because she performs."

For now, all the Bethlehem families can do is wait. Many,
like Dorothy Jaworski of West Seneca, see the senator's bill
as the only source of hope, the only way they'll be able to
collect what they deserve. Jaworski got a December 2003
letter from the Labor Department announcing she qualified
for the $150,000 because her late husband "had sustained
leukemia and pancreatic cancer in the performance of his
duty," only to have the offer rescinded, an apparent
"mistake," five months later.

If it weren't for Senator Clinton, Jaworski says, "this
whole issue would be dead." No matter what happens to the
bill, she appreciates the senator standing up for her. She
believes she'd have a check in hand if Hillary Clinton were
in charge. "With Hillary on our side," Jaworski says, "I
have faith."



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