Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

STATEMENT OF SENATOR GEORGE V. VOINOVICH

ENERGY EMPLOYEES OCCUPATIONAL ILLNESS COMPENSATION

SUBCOMMITTEE ON IMMIGRATION AND CLAIMS

HOUSE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE

SEPTEMBER 21, 2000

Mr. Chairman and members of the Subcommittee, let me first express my gratitude to you for holding this hearing this morning. The issue the Subcommittee is addressing today, compensation for workers at Cold War weapons facilities, is extremely important in my home state of Ohio as well as in many states and communities in our nation.

Mr. Chairman, as the guns of the Second World War fell silent, post-war politics and ideological divisions set the stage for the beginning of the Cold War - a forty-five year military stalemate between the United States and the Soviet Union. In order to assure that neither side gained a strategic edge over the other, both the United States and the Soviet Union engaged in massive build-ups of nuclear weaponry.

At facilities all across America - there are over 200 sites in 37 states across the country - tens of thousands of dedicated men and women in our civilian federal workforce helped keep our military fully supplied and our nation fully prepared to face any threat from the Soviet Union or any of our adversaries around the world. The hard work and patriotism exhibited by these individuals paid wonderful dividends, in that, their success in meeting the challenge of our potential rival partly can be attributed with the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

However, for many atomic weapons workers, their success came at a high price. To preserve our liberty, they sacrificed their health and some men and women even sacrificed their lives - in many instances without knowing the risks they were facing. These individuals have paid a high price for our freedom, and in their time of need, this nation has a moral obligation to provide financial and medical compensation to these Cold War veterans.

In the last year, four different Senate Committees have addressed the issues of worker exposure, inadequate protection taken by management and the resulting occupational illnesses at the Department of Energy's weapons facilities. The Administration has addressed this issue in the National Economic Council Report which was released this past spring. I introduced legislation in May which did more to make these workers whole than the Administration's proposal and I worked closely with a bipartisan group of Senators, the Administration and other interested parties to develop the Thompson Amendment which was included in the Senate passed National Defense Authorization bill. I am hopeful that that amendment, or a similar amendment, will be included in the Defense Authorization Conference Report and signed into law by the President.

Under the Thompson Amendment, a program is created for all workers who are due compensation because of an illness suffered due to the nature of a person's job. This amendment creates a federal program for workers suffering from beryllium disease, silicosis and cancer due to radiation exposure, many of these exposures are unique to the Department of Energy's nuclear weapons complex. Workers suffering from illnesses due to other chemical exposures would be covered under state workers compensation programs. The Department of Energy's Office of Workers' Compensation Advocate - created by this amendment - will help employees apply for compensation with their particular state's worker compensation program.

In addition, this amendment provides for a sound, science-based system that requires the reconstruction of doses if the department is able to reconstruct those records. If the Department is unable to find an employee's records, or, adequately estimate dose history, then the burden of proof threshold established is lowered and it is required that the government would have to disprove whether this worker's illness was caused by work or not. At the nation's three gaseous diffusion plants and Alaska's Amchitka Island test facility, it is assumed by this amendment that doses cannot be reconstructed.

Some of my colleagues may question whether or not the federal government should be making an expenditure of this amount of money. Some may ask how we will know which worker or family member has a bona fide claim for compensation. These are legitimate concerns. However, the nature of the illnesses involved suggests more than a coincidental relationship with their victims.

For example, beryllium disease is a "fingerprint" disease. That means it is particularly identifiable and cannot be mistaken for any other disease, leaving no doubt as to what caused the illness of the sufferer. Additionally, the processing of the beryllium metals that cause Chronic Beryllium Disease is singularly unique to our nuclear weapons facilities.

In cases of radiation exposure at DoE facilities, it is understandable that some may question whether a person was exposed to radioactive materials from another source, primarily because records may not reflect that an employee was exposed to such materials. The Department of Energy's independent investigation at Portsmouth which was released in May, showed that, in some cases, the destruction and alteration of Department of Energy workers' records occurred. There have been anecdotes indicating similar occurrences at other DoE facilities around the nation.

Additionally, dosimeter badges, which record radiation exposure, were not always required to be worn by DoE workers. And when they were required, they were not always worn properly or consistently. Workers at the Piketon plant also have stated that plant management not only did not keep adequate dosimetry records, in some cases, they changed the dosimetry records to show lower levels of radiation exposure. There have been reports that DoE plant management would even change dosimeter badges to read "zero" - which means the level of exposure to radiation would be officially recorded as zero, regardless of the exposure level that actually registered on the badge.

In too many instances, records do not exist, and where they do exist, there is adequate reason to doubt their accuracy. The amendment offered by Senator Thompson recognizes that this is the case at the Department of Energy's three Gaseous Diffusion Plants - Piketon, Ohio; Paducah, Kentucky; and Oak Ridge, Tennessee - and takes the unusual step of placing the burden of proof on the government to prove that an employee's illness was not caused by workplace hazards.

This amendment allows for sound science where it is available. Specifically, if it is possible to adequately and accurately estimate radiation doses, and scientifically assure that a worker's cancer is work-related or not. However, if it is not reasonably possible to adequately and accurately reconstruct doses, then ill workers covered under this amendment would be eligible for compensation that is based on criteria that already exists for workers at our nation's Gaseous Diffusion Plants.

To be clear, Mr. Chairman, under normal circumstances, I do not advocate a "guilty until proven innocent" approach. I firmly believe that we should use sound science to determine exposure levels and relationship to illness. Yet, these are not normal circumstances, and the reason Senator Thompson and I offered this amendment was because in too many instances, sound science either does not exist in DoE facility records, or it cannot be relied upon for accuracy.

For example, in my own state of Ohio, at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant - a plant that enriched uranium for use in nuclear weapons - workers had little or no idea that they had been exposed to dangerous levels of radioactive material. As the Department of Energy's own independent investigation has shown, such exposure went on for decades.

The independent investigation at Portsmouth also demonstrated that until recently, proper safety precautions were rarely taken to adequately protect workers' safety. Even when precautions were taken, the use of protective standards was inconsistent and in some instances were deemed only "moderately effective."

If consistent, reliable and factual data is not available, Mr. Chairman, then it will be quite difficult if not impossible to utilize sound science in order for employees to prove their claims.

Similar situations like those that have been documented at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant have been reported at other Ohio facilities including the Fernald Feed Materials Production Center in Fernald, Ohio and the Mound Facility in Miamisburg, Ohio, not to mention a host of other facilities nationwide. At this time, the Department of Energy is only acknowledging that these situations existed at the gaseous diffusion plants.

In addition to shoddy or non-existent record keeping, the DoE has admitted that at some facilities, workers were not told the nature of the substances they were handling. They weren't told about the ramifications that these materials may have on their future health and quality of life. It is truly unconscionable that DoE managers and other individuals in positions of responsibility could be so insensitive and uncaring.

Last year, the Toledo Blade published an award-winning series of articles outlining the plight of workers suffering from Chronic Beryllium Disease (CBD). While government standards were met in protecting the workers from exposure to beryllium dust, many workers still were diagnosed with CBD. Were the standards too low? Was the protective equipment faulty? Whatever the cause, it is estimated that 1,200 people across the nation have contracted CBD, and hundreds have died from it, making CBD the number-one disease directly caused by our Cold War effort.

Mr. Chairman, there may be some who think that the Senate amendment costs too much, and therefore we shouldn't do it. I vehemently disagree. It is my contention that the federal government would not be responsible for these costs - nor would Congress be discussing such costs - if adequate protections had been taken at these facilities over the last fifty years.

Congress appropriates billions of dollars annually on things that are not the responsibility of the federal government - and I have voted against a number of the bills that include this kind of funding. Here we have a clear instance where the federal government is responsible for the actions it has taken and the negligence it has shown against its own people. Peoples' health has been compromised and lives have been lost. In many instances, these workers didn't even know that their health and safety were in jeopardy. It is not only a responsibility of this government to provide for these individuals, it is a moral obligation.

My belief that we have a moral obligation to these Cold War veterans was strengthened last October when I attended a public meeting of workers from the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant. I learned an incredible amount about the integrity of the hard-working men and women and what they have been through.

I heard heart-wrenching stories from people like Ms. Anita George, a 23 year employee at Piketon who testified that "I only know of one woman that works in my department that has not had a hysterectomy and other reproductive problems." Ms. George described a situation where she and two of her colleagues were exposed to an "outgassing" on a "routine" decontamination job.

Afterwards, the women started to experience health problems, including heavy bleeding, elevated white blood cell counts and kidney infections. Plant physicians told them they should "just lie down and rest" if they had any problems while they were working. Three years after the exposure, all three women had had hysterectomies. Incredibly, the plant's managers fought their workers' compensation claims.

I also heard from people like Mr. Jeff Walburn, another 23 year plant employee and former councilman and vice mayor of the city of Portsmouth, who testified that while working in one of the buildings, he became so sick, that his lungs "granulated." When he went to the infirmary, they said he was "okay for work." Later that day, he went to the hospital because in his words, "my face was peeling off." According to Mr. Walburn, he couldn't speak, his hair started falling out, his lungs started "coming out" and his bowels failed to function for more than 6 days. When he went to get his records to file his worker's compensation claim, he was told that his diagnosis had been "changed, been altered."

The Department of Energy has held similar public meetings at facilities across the nation and these stories are not unique to the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant.

Mr. Chairman, it is unfortunate that the amendment we offered is necessary in the first place; the compensation it will provide is little consolation for the pain, health problems and diminished quality of life that these individuals have suffered. These men and women won the Cold War. Now, they simply ask that their government acknowledge that they were made ill in the course of doing their job and recognize that the government must take care of them.

Many of these workers have tried to seek restitution through their state bureaus of workers' compensation. Unfortunately, the vast majority of these claims have been denied - denied because the Department of Energy fought the claims, denied because state bureaus of workers' compensation do not have the facilities and/or resources necessary to adequately respond to the occupational illnesses unique to our defense establishment.

Until recently, the only way many of these employees believed they would ever receive proper restitution for what the government has done to them is to file a lawsuit against the Department of Energy or its contractors. But, in the time that I have been involved in this issue in the Senate, the Department of Energy has come a long way from its decades-long stance of stonewalling and denial of responsibility. Today, they admit that they have wronged our Cold War heroes. Still, we must do more.

All those who have served our nation fighting the Cold War have a right to know if the federal government was responsible for causing them illness or harm, and if so, to provide them the care and compensation that they need and deserve. That is the least we can do and that is the purpose of our amendment. I believe we must pass this or similar legislation in this session of Congress - while we and they still have time - in order to provide the proper level of assistance to these Cold War veterans.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.