Test site workers win round for claims

After nine years of denials and setbacks in a government program to compensate former Nevada Test Site employees for work-related illnesses, the retired nuclear weapons workers and survivors got some good news this week.

The agency charged with reconstructing their exposures to radioactive and toxic materials, which is key to proving or disproving their claims, has reversed its previous stance, saying instead the historic data needed for dose reconstructions are insufficient.

After a review of the tedious process, the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health is recommending special status that will give more than 500 former Nevada Test Site workers the benefit of the doubt.

Their claims for at least $150,000 apiece plus medical expenses will be processed without having to estimate the exposures through costly and time-consuming dose reconstructions if the institute's recommendation is approved by a work group next month and later by a presidential advisory board and is accepted by the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. Congress would have a chance to reject the recommendation, but that is unlikely, according to sources close to the program.

Dose reconstruction is a process of going back in time and trying to determine about how much radiation a particular worker was exposed to.

Approving the special status would mean former test site workers or their families from the days of below-ground nuclear weapons testing, 1963 to 1992, would have to show only they worked at the test site for 250 days during that period and were afflicted by one of the more than 20 cancers covered by the program.

"As presented in this position paper, NIOSH believes that there is insufficient information to adequately support ... reconstructing internal dose with sufficient accuracy," reads the report issued Wednesday.

The report recommends special status for all employees from the Energy Department, its predecessor agencies, contractors and subcontractors who worked at the test site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, from 1963 to 1992.

Workers during the years of above-ground nuclear weapons testing in Nevada, 1951 through 1962, already have been granted special exposure status.

In the years since the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program was announced in 2000, John Funk, chairman of the nonprofit Atomic Veterans and Victims of America Inc., has advocated reform in the program. Many times he has asked officials for the departments of Energy and Labor to put test site workers on par with out-of-state groups of Cold War nuclear workers that have been granted what is known as "special exposure cohort" status.

"They caved in because everything they tried didn't work," he said Thursday, reacting to the NIOSH position paper.

"I'm glad to hear it. This has been long and hard," Funk said.

Funk praised the efforts of Sanford Cohen and Associates, an independent contractor that conducted a review funded by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"Sanford and Cohen stood in our corner. Those guys put up a hell of a battle for us," he said.

A report last year by Lynn Anspaugh, a health physicist from Henderson and a Sanford Cohen associate, found that records and data about exposures were either flawed or missing and that the NIOSH model for dose reconstruction based on records of 100 co-workers was not defensible because the records weren't representative of all areas of the test site.

In an e-mail Thursday, Anspaugh said, "We are gratified that NIOSH has finally moved to bring this long process to an end."

Similarly, Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., who has backed a petition for special status for test site workers, said in a statement that he is "so pleased to share this good news with Nevada's energy workers, who were instrumental to our nation winning the Cold War."

"I look forward to the advisory board taking up the favorable NIOSH recommendation as soon as possible so that our sick test site workers and their families can finally get the compensation they deserve," Reid said.

Some former workers have died since their claims have been denied or while they waited for government agencies to act on their claims.

The Labor Department took over the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program from the Department of Energy in 2004 after Congress determined the Energy Department was taking too long to handle a backlog of cases.

So far, the program has cost the government at least $391 million to administer and has resulted in more than $2.47 billion in compensation to claimants nationwide.

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