Oak Ridge workers'

[Michael S Ford <MFORD@pantex.com>]

More on Oak Ridge .... has anyone heard any more on this?

v/r
Michael
mford@pantex.com
TRAB
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Study backs Oak Ridge workers' long-held suspicions 

By Laura Frank / Tennessean Staff Writer 

In a landmark finding that rebuts decades of assurances that nuclear
weapons plants are safe for workers, two doctors hired by the U.S.
Energy Department say poisons at the Oak Ridge reservation
harmed workers there.

"We're finding quite a few people who do, in fact, have illness that
we're going to conclude is related to the site," said one of the
medical experts, Dr. Richard C. Bird Jr., of the JSI Center for
Environmental Health Studies in Boston. "There's a lot -- more than
we expected."

The doctors will not release the number of affected workers until
they make a public report next month, but a majority of the 50-plus
workers examined so far were harmed, Bird said.

The doctors' findings validate long-held fears of Oak Ridge workers
that some were made sick by poisons in their workplace. The
findings also may have broad implications for sick workers at other
nuclear weapons plants across the country who suspect they, too,
have been made ill by their jobs, Bird said.

Past health studies at the weapons sites have focused on workers in
specific jobs who were exposed to specific substances, like
uranium. This study is finding that workers across the Oak Ridge
site -- from administration workers to researchers -- were harmed in
the ordinary course of doing their jobs.

Not all ailments among the sick workers are site-related, said Dr.
James E. Lockey, the other member of the medical team and director
of the University of Cincinnati Medical School's occupational and
environmental medicine division. However, "a significant number of
people we looked at do have one type or other of something we
think is most likely work-related," he said.

The Tennessean has interviewed more than 400 ill workers and
residents around 13 major weapons sites from New York to
California suffering illness their doctors couldn't explain.

The symptoms reported mirror those found by the environmental
health experts in Oak Ridge. These include memory loss,
numbness, dizziness and breathing difficulties, among other things.

Bird and Lockey were hired three years ago by the Energy
Department to investigate the claims of more than 50 Oak Ridge
workers who were reporting unexplained illnesses.

DOE spokesman Steven Wyatt said of the doctors findings: "We
take these illnesses very seriously, and it's our goal to be very
proactive. The department is very eager to get the full results on the
study and to act accordingly. If we need additional characterization
on site, we'll do that.  If there's a contamination source identified,
we'll remove the source of the problem."

Workers suspect they were exposed to a variety of toxic substances,
such as mercury, nickel, uranium and chemical solvents. The
Energy Department, which owns the sites, acknowledges they are
contaminated, but has long insisted workers are safe because they
are not exposed to poisons at levels high enough to harm them.

Yet, Bird and Lockey found that an array of health problems among
some Oak Ridge workers is, indeed, related to toxic exposure from
the site.

"There tends to be a feeling that there's no adverse outcomes" at the
sites, Bird said. "But we found (ill) workers who weren't in obvious
danger settings. Some of them were in jobs you wouldn't have
expected to be related to illness."

Donzettia Hill is one of those people. She was an administrative
support worker in a supposedly noncontaminated building. Today,
she has severe sinus trouble, shows signs of early lung disease
related to the metal beryllium, has been diagnosed with immune
system problems and several times her heart stopped beating before
doctors sent her for an emergency pacemaker operation.

"Where would I have been exposed to beryllium?" Hill asked. "You're
talking about support people in the line of fire, unprotected. This
validates what we've been saying. It's been a long time coming.
We've lost our health, our finances, and even some of our friends
who thought we were crazy.

"Doctors Lockey and Bird have been my only hope through this.
This is great news."

The doctors already have recommended some workers leave the
Oak Ridge site, and they expect to make more recommendations at
the end of October.

"In some cases, we're recommending that people leave the job, and
we've done that as quickly as we're able to because we are
concerned about possible continued exposure," Bird said. "We
certainly will be raising some implications ... some concerns about
the site. At this point, we're not ready to say how we'll proceed."

The doctors have found people who have, for example, nerve
damage causing numbness and tingling in their extremities, brain
damage causing memory loss and inability to think clearly, and lung
damage that affects their breathing.

"There are at least three or four major categories with many, many
medical considerations -- anything from dizziness to neuropathy to
brain considerations to depression to respiratory disease," Bird said.

The doctors said they would release more complete information next
month, but the causes of the illness range from the ingredients of
bomb-making, such as beryllium and nickel, to more common
substances, such as fungi.

The doctors were hired to examine a group of sick Oak Ridge
workers only. The doctors said they expect to recommend exams
also be offered to other Oak Ridge workers with similar symptoms.
However, there is no current plan for any similar approach for
workers at other DOE sites, or residents living near the sites.

"What can we do to get them here?" asked Freddie Fulmer, an ill
former worker at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. "We
need some help."

Linda Harper said she also hopes such help will be expanded to
sick neighbors of the sites. She lives about a mile from the part of
the Oak Ridge site historically known as K-25 and suffers illness
similar to some workers, including memory loss, neurological
problems and shortness of breath.

"If the residents have the same symptoms as the workers, there
seems an obvious connection," Harper said. "And if the doctors are
saying the affected workers were across the site, it would also make
sense that nearby residents could have been affected. It would be
great if DOE would have a heart and open up to help the residents."

Harper also points to a growing body of evidence that more of the 
contaminants from the sites escaped into the surrounding air, water
and soil than previously known.

The doctors, in an interview, said the legacy of secrecy at the site
and a string of revelations that exposures were potentially more
harmful than previously thought have placed tremendous stress on
some of the workers.

"There are people we have who were supervisors who thought they
were doing the right things who now think they weren't," Bird said.
"They're afraid, upset and worried that workers under their
supervision might be sick because of things they had control over at
some point."

While such stress may be affecting some of the workers physically,
it does not explain the illness, Lockey added.

"I wouldn't want it to come across that stress is causing all these 
illnesses," Lockey said. "That is not the case. There are people with
illness we can directly link to an exposure, and not necessarily one
exposure. An individual's susceptibility also comes into play, and
we have documented that."

The doctors' work is unlike typical DOE studies because it started by
looking at ill individual workers and then trying to determine what
made them sick.  DOE studies usually begin with toxic substances
and then try to determine if they have had a harmful effect.

Bird and Lockey have studied the workers' symptoms and
suggested medical treatment when necessary.

"This type of evaluation is time-consuming, difficult and expensive,
but it's important in these areas where there are exposure
circumstances and areas of great concern," Bird said. "It's a different
type of investigation that really isn't typically done, and I think we
could really learn a lot from it."

Many of the ill workers agree. For at least three years, a group of ill
Oak Ridge workers and their advocates have been asking for such
clinical studies.

"This is what we've wanted," said Harry Williams, president of an
Oak Ridge ill-worker support group called Coalition for a Healthy
Environment. "Always before, the studies have been general and not
focused on individuals with illnesses. All we've ever wanted is for
qualified doctors to look at us individually."

Such clinical studies, the doctors agree, have a better chance of
completing the difficult task of identifying potential causes of health
problems.

"There are a lot of unknowns -- issues of low-level exposure,
individual susceptibility -- but sometimes these are overstated," Bird
said. "We don't have a clear understanding of low-level exposures
over long periods, but we do have a lot to work with. We have the
timing of onset, conditions we're able to diagnose, and individual
chemicals and cases that are less complicated that tell us about
diseases present in a certain pattern."

This tedious, detailed work, done in this case by the two doctors
and a handful of assistants, has taken longer than the six months
originally budgeted, Bird said.

"This is something that requires us to nail down our opinion, the
basis of it, exposure scenarios, the timing of symptoms. It's a huge
task," Bird said.  "It has huge implications."

But the process will go more smoothly for other workers with similar
symptoms who've come forward since this study began, Bird said.

"This group of workers has helped the other workers," Bird said.
"Many have worked hard to find information about exposure at the
site that wasn't clear to us or others. We're (now) able to know how
best to work with the workers.  We'll have to decide how to handle
those (other workers). I think we should handle them individually
and have them evaluated in the process we've set up."

The good news for some workers is their ailments can be treated.
But that is not true for all of them.

"We expect some people to get better when they leave the site and
whatever exposure they've had," Bird said. "Others may not be
reversible."
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