Workers May Have Tasted Uranium

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Workers May Have Tasted Uranium

.c The Associated Press

 CINCINNATI (AP) - Some former workers at a Department of Energy uranium-
processing plant say inspectors commonly tasted radioactive salts to decide
whether they would make good laboratory samples.

Such practices are coming to light as scientists interview longtime employees
in a medical-monitoring program that former workers at the Fernald site won in
settling a lawsuit against the government.

``I don't know whether it was just stupidity or a lack of knowledge,'' Gene
Branham, vice president of a coalition of 14 employee unions at the Fernald
site, said Monday.

During the 1950s, middle managers at the former Feed Materials Production
Center at Fernald, 18 miles northwest of Cincinnati, would put a granular
uranium hexafluoride substance called ``green salt'' on their tongues to check
for the telltale metallic taste of a good sample.

The managers apparently worried that if they sent samples of poor quality to a
lab for testing, their productivity records would suffer.

``I'm sure they wouldn't have done it if they thought it was dangerous,'' said
Susan Pinney, an associate professor of environmental health at the University
of Cincinnati.

She is helping compile interviews with former Fernald workers to determine
long-term health effects of continued exposure to radioactive materials.

The Atomic Energy Commission, now part of the Energy Department, operated the
Fernald site during its early years and failed to share with workers its
information about the health hazards of radioactive materials, Branham said.

But state-of-the-art information in the 1950s wasn't what it is now, DOE
spokesman Ken Morgan said.

``I don't think it was ever anybody's policy that you should be sticking green
salt in your mouth,'' Morgan said.

Branham, vice president of the Fernald Atomic Trades and Labor Council, has
worked at the Fernald site since 1952, about a year after it started
processing uranium for the government's production elsewhere of nuclear
weapons. The so-called green salt was used in producing uranium ingots.

Production ended in 1989 but the cleanup of radioactive contamination at
Fernald is expected to take until at least 2005.

AP-NY-05-12-98 1229EDT

 Copyright 1998 The Associated Press.