Law allowing special compensation for test site workers takes effect

After 10 years and many bureaucratic hurdles, a law allowing special compensation for Nevada Test Site workers for cancers linked to their employment during the years of below-ground nuclear weapons testing took effect Wednesday.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., in a news release, declared the Special Exposure Cohort measure "a tremendous victory" that will speed up compensation ranging from $150,000 to $400,000 plus medical benefits to ill test site workers and survivors of those who have died. The special status, allowed under the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program, is significant because the former workers or their survivors won't have to endure dose reconstructions to prove their claims.

"Beginning today, many of these workers will now be eligible for automatic compensation, putting an end to years of bureaucratic nightmares and red tape," Reid said in the Congressional Record.

Former Nevada Test Site worker John Funk, who advocated the special status as chairman of the nonprofit Atomic Veterans and Victims of America Inc., said the final approval is "better late than never."

"I'm elated," Funk said. "It should have been here a lot sooner."

Funk was instrumental in persuading the presidential Advisory Board on Radiation Worker Health that there were many flaws in their effort to handle claims through costly reconstructions of radiation doses many received on the job.

"They never did have a co-worker model, and they could never do accurate dose reconstructions," Funk said.

About 1,365 claimants might be eligible for compensation under the Special Exposure Cohort status, according to the Labor Department.

Under the status, test site workers who were on the job at least 250 days between Jan. 1, 1963, and Dec. 31, 1992, and who contracted at least one of 22 designated cancers will be automatically eligible .

Test site workers from the days of above-ground nuclear weapons testing, 1951 through 1962, have been approved previously for the special status.

For information about special exposure cohort status, listed cancers and filing claims, go to www.cdc.gov/niosh/ocas or call 877-222-7570 to reach a health adviser.

For questions about reopening claims under the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program that have been denied by the Department of Labor, call 866-888-3322.