D.O.E.'S DISGRACE

Estimates for the cost of cleaning up the mess run as high as $175 billion. But that figure does not include other, less quantifiable costs. Most acute among these is the health risk for tens of thousands of workers at DOE facilities around the country and residents who live near those facilities. Congress has ordered the Centers for Disease Control to conduct an epidemiological study of residents in the Hanford vicinity to determine if there has been a measurable increase in the incidence of cancer there, and a similar study is being considered for the area of southern Ohio near the Fernald plant. Congress also approved a Nuclear Defense Safety Board to oversee DOE nuclear weapons production. And Democratic Senator John Glenn of Ohio has introduced legislation to transfer occupational safety and health responsibility from DOE to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

As yet, however, there is no federal plan for large-scale medical monitoring of exposed workers. Symptoms of radiation exposure can take up to 20 years to manifest. DOE has proposed notifying workers of health problems they may suffer as a result of exposure, but many feel the proposal is the proverbial "too little, too late."

"Outraged," is how Sylvia Krekel, occupational health specialist with the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Internationl Union, describes labor's response to the revelations.

At the same time, Krekel says, "It's not surprising." Workers, she notes, have long been shut out of the health and safety process at DOE facilities. "What this problem has made clear is that the reason all the weapon sites are on the edge of ruin today is because workers have been excluded from any control over the health and safety components of those plants' operations."

Paul Burnsky, president of the Metal Trades Division of the AFL- CIO, accused the contract managers of the facilities of "deliberate and callous neglect" of worker safety, and criticized their failure to inform workers of the risks they faced. Speaking at the annual Joint Nuclear Workers Conference, Burnsky added, "Cleanup of our nation's nuclear industry must hold a high priority on the national agenda."

Compounding reports of extensive radiation release and pollution is the fact that DOE, through a combination of negligence, incompetence and deception, hid knowledge of the releases and their risk to workers and the public for 35 years. Contractors operating the facilities, DOE admits, repeatedly asked the government to improve safety procedures to no avail. The government, critics contend, consistently placed the nation's nuclear weapons production schedule ahead of public health and safety, ignoring and suppressing information to avoid setbacks to the program. "We are poisoning our people in the name of national security," charged Sen. Glenn.

DOE and the contractors that run DOE facilities, says Krekel, "have the production imperative in mind." DOE sets its own internal regulations for worker exposure, and the contractors are responsible for medical monitoring of workers. "DOE, which is in charge of promoting nuclear energy, should not be in charge of regulating. And a contractor who is interested in making money should not be in charge of occupational and environmental health," Krekel says.

In response to the disclosures, Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) has called for a comprehensive, nationwide study to assess illness and death associated with DOE nuclear weapons production.

"DOE has a profound conflict of interest between meeting nuclear weapons production schedules and ensuring the health and safety of its employees and the public," the group wrote in recommending the study. "The evidence that has come to light ... makes it clear that DOE has historically chosen to resolve that conflict in favor of production, with potentially catastrophic results."

There are more than 142,000 workers, at 127 facilities, involved in the country's nuclear weapons program. Technically, they are employees of the contractors that operate the government-owned plants. The unique division between ownership and operation raises significant problems for those workers in seeking legal relief. Corporations have historically been protected from liability when they are performing work for the federal government. Whether this leaves DOE workers in a legal vacuum is as yet unclear. DOE, critics charge, generally tries to shield contractors from liability in the area of environmental and occupational safety, and it assumed responsibility for conditions at the facilities largely based on its own immunity.

Nonetheless, a group representing 14,000 people living within five miles of the Fernald plant recently filed suit against NLO Inc. (which operated the plant between 1951 and 1985), seeking $300 million in damages. DOE insists that NLO is not liable and, indeed, cannot even be sued, because it was acting under government (DOE) orders.

While the DOE scandal has received much coverage in the media, much less attention has been given to similar problems at the nation's commercial nuclear reactors. The Massachusetts Department of Public Health, for example, has found increased levels of leukemia--as high as 76 percent higher than the state average--in communities near Boston Edison's Pilgrim nuclear power plant. In response to that finding, the National Institutes of Health announced in February 1988 that it would study cancer deaths among residents living near 100 nuclear power plants around the country. Results are expected to be available in spring 1989, but already the methodology of the study has come under question. Senator Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., wrote to Dr. Samuel Broder, director of the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health, to suggest that the study's reliance on mortality data was unwise, since it ignored other indicators that could demonstrate health problems caused by nuclear power, such as increased incidence of leukemia. Kennedy points out that the Pilgrim study, which used both mortality and incidence measurements, showed a "marked increase" in leukemia. "This anomaly would likely have been overlooked by relying solely on the use of mortality data," Kennedy wrote. Other problems with the methodology include use of county-wide data, ignoring factors, most notably wind direction, that can affect exposure areas. Use of county-wide statistics can also hide increased risks. "Had county-wide statistics been utilized near the Pilgrim plant," writes Kennedy, "the increased incidence of leukemia would have been lost amidst a large amount of data from communities not likely impacted from the plant."

Nuclear proponents claim there is no concrete link between radiation releases at nuclear power plants and increased cancer rates among people living nearby, implying that it is only coincidence. But there is a growing body of statistical evidence that suggests the two are related. The agenda for workers now is twofold: First, labor must ensure that those workers who have been needlessly exposed over the last 35 years receive proper medical monitoring and, if necessary, treatment for maladies arising from their radiation exposure. Then, labor needs to take a more aggressive role in insisting on adequate workplace health and safety standards for those involved in nuclear weapons or nuclear power.

OCAW's Krekel recognizes these challenges. "The responsibility for medical monitoring should be taken away from the contractors, who, again, have the production imperative in mind. Workers should be running those programs," she says. "There have been too many abuses in the past of not revealing radiation exposures."

As for the future, Krekel believes that labor "has to take a more active role, we have to have authority to police these plants. We have to remove the occupational and environmental health component from the producers and give it to those who have a mission of protecting people. In this instance, who's the protector? Basically, the workers themselves. They have the most at stake."

The horrific revelations of 1988 show that government will sacrifice both law and principle in its quest for a dubious "national security." Changing that, says Krekel, "is going to be a struggle. But it's one we are going to wage."