Workers’ claims may be reopened

Compensation cases of more than 700 Nevada Test Site workers who blamed their illnesses on exposure to radioactive materials could be reopened after an audit found flaws in the documents used to assess them.

Peter Turcic, director of the Labor Department's Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program, said any denied case affected by changes being made to the documents will be returned to the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, or NIOSH, for revisions in radiation dose estimates.

Those cases in question will be "sent back to NIOSH immediately in order to give claimants adequate due process," Turcic said in a telephone interview.

He said the total number of cases, 730, doesn't include 53 that were awaiting decisions and will be returned to NIOSH. Nor does the total include another 180 returned previously to NIOSH for dose-estimate revisions.

NIOSH officials acknowledged last week that an audit conducted two years ago by a contractor, Sanford Cohen and Associates, resulted in a "total rewrite" of at least two of six sections of the test site's technical basis document, also known as the site profile.

Larry Elliott, director of the NIOSH Office of Compensation Analysis and Support, said the number of dose reconstructions that will have to be reworked remains to be seen.

"We don't know how many that will be until we complete revision of the document," he said. "It could be all or none."

Each dose reconstruction typically costs between $1,000 and $5,000, depending on the claimant's work history. The task involves evaluating how much radiation a person was exposed to and how much radioactivity entered a person's body based on the time and location where he or she worked, activities that took place and any dosimetry and employment records that exist.

One section of the site profile document contains historical information about tests and activities involving radioactive materials or releases.

If dose reconstructions show that workers' cancers are more than likely caused by their workplace exposures, then they stand to receive $150,000 each in compensation plus reimbursements for medical costs.

As of last week, the Labor Department had paid $18.9 million to 161 former test site workers or their survivors after dose reconstructions showed their illnesses probably were linked to exposure to radioactive materials at the test site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

If new information warrants any changes, a review will be conducted to determine whether compensation is warranted in cases previously denied, Chris Ellison, a NIOSH communications team leader, wrote in an e-mail last week.

She said NIOSH staff members are revising the site profile and the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health is reviewing it.

Lynn Anspaugh, a Henderson health physicist and former Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientist who is a consultant to the audit firm, said significant information was missing from the test site's profile even though some of it had been well known for decades and can be found easily on the Internet. "They're going to have to go back and re-examine every claim that's been denied," he said.

One example, he noted, was the lack of disclosure about operation of the Bare Reactor Experiment Nevada, also known as the BREN tower, in Area 4 of the test site from 1962 to 1966. The site profile document references the BREN tower only in Area 25 but doesn't mention that the unshielded reactor was used in Area 4 of Yucca Flat. It was hoisted up and down the tower, which was 55 feet taller than the Empire State Building, to estimate radiation doses received by survivors of the atomic bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, Japan.

Anspaugh said program officials need to find out how operations were conducted there involving the BREN tower and determine whether there was a potential for exposure of workers traveling on the main road through the area and in nearby camps where they spent time on the job.

The site profile fails to mention that after the BREN tower was dismantled in 1966 and moved to Area 25, it was used for Operation HENRE (High Energy Neutron Reactions Experiment) to develop information for the Atomic Energy Commission's biomedical research program.

"Not even considering the BREN reactor, they have made substantial changes in the method for dose reconstruction. These changes have not yet been approved by the advisory board, and we understand that additional changes are on the way," Anspaugh said.

Ellison said NIOSH officials only "recently found out about the activity in the BREN reactor from 1962 to 1966. We are continuing to update the site profile and will include this information," she wrote. Anspaugh said one flaw with the site profile is that no "site expert" is listed for the test site, one who could be held accountable for documenting all events that could have resulted in doses to the workers.

When asked about this, Ellison wrote that the document lists "subject experts" but didn't explain why there was no specific "site expert" for the Nevada Test Site other than to say, "We have also consulted with a variety of site experts ... and will continue to do so as issues arise."

John Funk, a former test site worker whose radiation cancer claim has been denied and appealed since the program's inception in 2001, alerted NIOSH officials two weeks ago about incomplete information regarding the BREN tower.

Funk is chairman of the non-profit advocacy group Atomic Veterans and Victims of America. He said he's pleased that NIOSH is revising the test site's profile "but not satisfied yet because the recent disclosure of the BREN tower operating in Area 4 ... is grounds for another total rewrite of the technical basis documents and the site profile."

"So does that mean we will have to wait another two years to get the BREN tower issues cleared up?" Funk asked.

"And I also wonder why NIOSH was recommending only last month to deny Nevada Test Site workers special exposure status (to eliminate the need for many dose reconstructions) when they knew damn well these changes would impact that decision," he said.

Contact reporter Keith Rogers at krogers@reviewjournal.com or (702) 383-0308.