Test site workers’ timing key

WASHINGTON -- Hundreds of former Nevada Test Site workers seeking a fast track for health claims after being exposed to radiation and toxic substances on their jobs have encountered a new setback.

A federal agency is recommending that people who worked at the nuclear proving ground from 1963 through 1992 not be granted a special classification that would streamline $150,000 compensation and medical payments if they contracted certain cancers or lung diseases as they grew older.

Workers from earlier years at the test site, when atomic bombs were exploded in the atmosphere and radiation exposure records were spotty, already qualify for what is known as special exposure cohort status for the payments distributed by the Department of Labor.

But the director of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health said Tuesday that his agency believes there are sufficient records available from the later years -- when weapons were detonated underground -- for the government to weigh health claims individually.

"For the underground ones, we think there is enough monitoring data. That is the one we recommended be denied," said NIOSH director John Howard. "We have enough data. That is the bottom line."

The NIOSH report, which was issued on Sept. 24, is not the final word although it is expected to carry some weight when the Presidential Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health issues a formal recommendation, possibly early next year. The board is scheduled to meet in Las Vegas from Jan. 8-10.

A final decision would rest with Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt.

Lacking any special treatment, former test site workers must wait along with thousands of other nuclear workers nationwide for NIOSH and the Department of Labor to evaluate their health claims, a process that sometimes takes years and has sparked enormous frustration among families.

Under the main compensation program, former test site workers have filed 4,002 claims, with 1,339 denied and 787 paid to a total of $79 million, according to figures provided by the Department of Labor.

For an associated workers comp-style program, 2,856 test site claims have been requested, with 669 denied and 283 paid so far for a total $33 million.

Oscar Foger of Las Vegas, a miner who excavated blast holes at the test site and who worked on tunnel re-entry teams, said he lost a kidney to cancer earlier this year. He worked at the site from May 1959, through Nov. 16, 1995.

Foger, 65, said he began pursuing compensation in January. He said the idea that test site records are trustworthy "is not true at all, and anybody who files a claim can attest to the same thing. Half the records have been destroyed and the other half, I would not say they were falsified, but they are not correct."

Lynn Anspaugh, a health physicist who formerly worked at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and who has studied the test site, said the NIOSH findings appear based on a test site evaluation that might have been incomplete.

"The site profile is undergoing revision, and they have made some very substantial changes that have not been approved by the board," Anspaugh said. "Any evaluation that says it is based on information in the site profile, I think is very premature."

A petition seeking special exposure cohort status for the test site workers was filed with NIOSH in February by a group of former employees with help from Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev.

Trying another strategy, Reid prepared an amendment for Congress to fast-track the test site workers but was unable to get it added to a defense bill earlier this month.

"We knew it was going to be difficult to secure special exposure cohort status for all NTS workers," Reid spokesman Jon Summers said, adding the senator is "concerned" about the agency's recommendation.

"NIOSH's report is far from a final decision," Summers said.

On Tuesday, Reid urged a Senate committee to fix the compensation program, where the biggest complaint is over how long it takes to render decisions, particularly when a person's exposure records need to be reconstructed.

"I think this program has the right intentions, but it is clearly failing thousands of Americans who helped us win the Cold War," Reid said at a hearing of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., said afterward he will explore a bill that automatically would fast-track claims for workers whose cases cannot be processed within a set time period.

"There are still too many examples and stories of delay and frustration on the part of claimants," Alexander said. "I am considering legislation that would put a time limit on how much time can be taken on dose reconstruction."