S. Hrg. 106–570

DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY’S MANAGEMENT OF

HEALTH AND SAFETY ISSUES AT ITS GASEOUS

DIFFUSION PLANTS IN OAK RIDGE, TENNESSEE,

AND PIKETON, OHIO

HEARING

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS

UNITED STATES SENATE

ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

MARCH 22, 2000

Printed for the use of the Committee on Governmental Affairs

(

OF ENERGY’S MANAGEMENT OF HEALTH AND SAFETY ISSUES AT ITS

IFFUSION PLANTS IN OAK RIDGE, TENNESSEE, AND PIKETON, OHIO

U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

64–250 cc WASHINGTON : 2000

S. Hrg. 106–570

DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY’S MANAGEMENT OF

HEALTH AND SAFETY ISSUES AT ITS GASEOUS

DIFFUSION PLANTS IN OAK RIDGE, TENNESSEE,

AND PIKETON, OHIO

HEARING

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS

UNITED STATES SENATE

ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

MARCH 22, 2000

Printed for the use of the Committee on Governmental Affairs

(

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, Congressional Sales Office

U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC 20402

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS

FRED THOMPSON, Tennessee, Chairman

WILLIAM V. ROTH, Jr., Delaware

TED STEVENS, Alaska

SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine

GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio

PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico

THAD COCHRAN, Mississippi

ARLEN SPECTER, Pennsylvania

JUDD GREGG, New Hampshire

JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut

CARL LEVIN, Michigan

DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii

RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois

ROBERT G. TORRICELLI, New Jersey

MAX CLELAND, Georgia

JOHN EDWARDS, North Carolina

HANNAH S. SISTARE, Staff Director and Counsel

WILLIAM M. OUTHIER, Investigative Counsel

ELIZABETH ‘‘LIBBY’’ S. WOOD, Legislative Director for Senator Thompson

CATHERINE C. WALTERS, Legislative Assistant for Senator Voinovich

ANDREW RICHARDSON, Professional Staff Member,

Oversight of Government Management, Restructuring and the District of Columbia

JOYCE A. RECHTSCHAFFEN, Minority Staff Director and Counsel

JONATHAN M. GILL, Minority GAO Detailee

DARLA D. CASSELL, Administrative Clerk

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Opening statements: Page

Senator Thompson ............................................................................................ 1

Senator Voinovich ............................................................................................. 2

Senator Akaka .................................................................................................. 7

Senator Lieberman ........................................................................................... 8

WITNESSES

WEDNESDAY MARCH 22, 2000

Vikki Hatfield, daughter of former K–25 and Y–12 worker, Kingston, Tennessee .................................................................................................................... 8

Ann H. Orick, former K–25 worker, Knoxville, Tennessee .................................. 11

Sam Ray, former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant worker, Lucasville,

Ohio ....................................................................................................................... 15

Jeffery B. Walburn, current guard with restriction, Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, Greenup, Kentucky ........................................................................ 17

David Michaels, Ph.D., MPH, Assistant Secretary for Environment, Safety

and Health, U.S. Department of Energy, Washington, DC .............................. 28

Steven B. Markowitz, M.D., Professor and Director, Center for the Biology

of Natural Systems, Queens College, City University of New York, Flushing, New York ....................................................................................................... 30

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF WITNESSES

Hatfield, Vikki:

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 8

Prepared statement with attachments ........................................................... 48

Markowitz, Steven B., M.D.:

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 30

Prepared statement with attachments ........................................................... 93

Michaels, David, Ph.D.:

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 28

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 86

Orick, Ann H.:

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 11

Prepared statement with attachments ........................................................... 63

Ray, Sam:

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 15

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 72

Walburn, Jeffery B.:

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 17

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 84

APPENDIX

Senator Mike DeWine, U.S. Senator from the State of Ohio, prepared statement ...................................................................................................................... 47

Question for the record submitted by Senator Stevens and response from

Dr. David Michaels .............................................................................................. 47

ADDITIONAL TESTIMONY SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD

Peggy Adkins, Oak Ridge, TN ................................................................................ 123

Ruby I. Anderson, Kingston, TN ............................................................................ 124

Glenn Bell, Oak Ridge, TN, with attachments ..................................................... 128

Page

IV

Joseph P. Carson, P.E., Knoxville, TN ................................................................... 191

Richard Coen ............................................................................................................ 194

Linda Cox, Clinton, TN ........................................................................................... 195

Lynn Cox, Clinton, TN ............................................................................................ 198

Cheryll A. Dyer, Clinton, TN .................................................................................. 201

Rick A. Dyer, Clinton, TN ....................................................................................... 205

Sherrie Graham Farver, Oak Ridge, TN, with attachments ................................ 206

Linda Gass, Powell, TN, with attachments ........................................................... 234

Harry Edwin Gray, Oak Ridge, TN ........................................................................ 247

Barbara Hooper, Knoxville, TN .............................................................................. 248

Roscoe Hooper, Knoxville, TN ................................................................................ 252

J.D. Hunter, Oliver Springs, TN ............................................................................ 253

Elizabeth Hutchins, Nashville, TN ........................................................................ 255

Rose Marshall, Knoxville, TN ................................................................................. 256

Karen Renee ́ Dyer Massey, Hermitage, TN .......................................................... 258

Janet R. Michel, Knoxville, TN .............................................................................. 260

James E. Phelps, Oak Ridge, TN ........................................................................... 277

Mary Pinckard, Kingston, TN ................................................................................ 284

Mack A. Orick, Knoxville, TN ................................................................................. 287

Edward A. Slavin, Jr., ‘‘DOE’s Toxic, Hostile Working Environment Violates

Human Rights’’ ..................................................................................................... 294

Thomas G. and Marjorie Spangler, Knoxville, TN ................................................ 437

Kathryn B. Swain, Harrisburg, NC ....................................................................... 438

Roy E. Swatzell ........................................................................................................ 441

Lloyd Terry, Powell, TN .......................................................................................... 442

Sherry Terry, Powell, TN ........................................................................................ 443

Whitney Terry, Powell, TN ..................................................................................... 444

Janine L. Voner, Maryville, TN .............................................................................. 445

Pamela Gillis Watson, Oak Ridge, TN ................................................................... 447

(1)

DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY’S MANAGEMENT

OF HEALTH AND SAFETY ISSUES AT ITS

GASEOUS DIFFUSION PLANTS IN OAK

RIDGE, TENNESSEE, AND PIKETON, OHIO

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 22, 2000

U.S. SENATE, COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS, Washington, DC.

The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:17 a.m., in room

SD–342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Fred Thompson,

Chairman of the Committee, presiding.

Present: Senators Thompson, Voinovich, Lieberman, and Akaka.

OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN THOMPSON

Chairman THOMPSON. The Committee will come to order, please.

Senator Lieberman, our Ranking Member, has a matter that is

going to take him until about 10:30, so he will be joining us in

about 20 minutes. I think Senator Akaka and some others will be

joining with us shortly. But we are getting started a little late, so

I want to go ahead and begin. We usually like to start these things

on time, but we had a vote this morning at 10, so we had to go

and vote before we started.

I want to welcome all of those who have come from Oak Ridge,

Tennessee, and Piketon, Ohio to attend this hearing. We certainly

appreciate you traveling all this way to be here. We know this

issue is very important to you. It is very important to us and to

many others at both sites who could not be here with us today, but

they are well represented.

We are here this morning to discuss one of the more unseemly

aspects of the Cold War: The possibility that the Federal Government put workers at its nuclear weapons plants in harm’s way

without the workers’ knowledge.

Now, I have been concerned about this issue for some time, since

I started hearing from current and former workers in the Oak

Ridge area about a pattern of unexplained illnesses that many believed were related to their service at the Department of Energy

site.

In 1997, the Nashville Tennessean had extensive coverage and

interviews of many people. They had done very impressive work

that brought this to the attention of not only people in Tennessee,

but in other parts of the country. So in 1997, I asked then-Director

of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to send a team to Oak

2

Ridge to assess the situation and try to determine if what we were

seeing there was truly unique.

Unfortunately, in the end, the CDC did not take a broad enough

look at the situation to really answer all the questions that had

been raised. That, of course, has been a pattern at Oak Ridge and

at many of these DOE sites over the years. Studies have been done,

some on very narrow populations, and some on larger ones, some

apparently showing some correlations and some not able to reach

any conclusions at all. The data is mixed, some of it is flawed, and

we are left with a situation that is confusing and from which it has

been very difficult to draw definite conclusions on every aspect of

it.

Yet, there is a growing realization that there are illnesses among

current and former DOE workers that logic tells us are probably

related to their service at these weapons sites.

For example, approximately 150 current and former workers at

the DOE complex have been diagnosed with Chronic Beryllium Disease. Many more have so-called ‘‘beryllium sensitivity,’’ which often

develops into Chronic Beryllium Disease. The only way to contract

either of these conditions is to be exposed to beryllium powder. The

only entities that use beryllium in that form are the Department

of Energy and the Department of Defense.

There are other examples, perhaps less clear-cut, but certainly

worthy of concern—uranium, plutonium, a variety of heavy metals

found in people’s bodies. Anecdotes about hazardous working conditions where people were unprotected both against exposures they

knew were there and exposures of which they were not aware.

So it is time for the Federal Government to stop automatically

denying any responsibility and face up to the fact that it appears

as though it made at least some people sick. The question now is:

what can we do about it? And how do we make sure it never happens again?

I want to say that I believe the Department of Energy—and especially Dr. Michaels, who will be testifying here this morning—

have taken important steps forward in this regard. Rather than

continuing to deny any linkage, they have said that if the Department made people sick, then we should compensate them for it. I

look forward to working with the Department and with the Oak

Ridge community, and with my colleagues in the Senate to determine the best and fairest way to accomplish that goal.

In the end, we must remember that these workers were helping

to defend our Nation and protect our security. They were patriotic

and proud of the work that they were doing. If the Federal Government made mistakes that jeopardized their health and safety, then

we need to do what we can do to make it right. A great country

can do nothing less.

Senator Voinovich.

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR VOINOVICH

Senator VOINOVICH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to

first of all thank you for holding this hearing this morning. It is

very important to the people in Southern Ohio and your own State

and I think that this hearing has national implications in terms of

how this country treats people that have been injured as a result

3

of working at nuclear facilities that are important to our Nation’s

national security.

I would like to thank Sam Ray and Jeff Walburn for your courage in coming here today and relaying their personal experiences

to the Members of this Committee.

Since 1954, and the start of the Cold War, the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon, Ohio, has served as one of a handful of our Nation’s processors of high-quality nuclear material. The

main purpose of the plant at Piketon was to enrich uranium for the

use in nuclear weapons and propulsion systems for our naval vessels. Sometimes people forget about the fact that almost all of our

major naval vessels are propelled by nuclear power.

Over the years, thousands of dedicated men and women in the

civilian workforce at Piketon helped keep our military fully supplied and our Nation fully prepared to meet any potential threat.

Their success is measured in part with the end of the Cold War

and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

However, their success came at a high price.

Over the years, the Columbus Dispatch has run a number of articles dealing with health and safety incidences among the employees at Piketon. The most recent series of articles showed that for

decades, some workers at Piketon did not know they had been exposed to dangerous levels of radioactive material, because, until recently, proper safety precautions were rarely taken to adequately

protect workers’ safety. Even when precautions were taken, the application of protective standards was certainly inconsistent.

For years, few workers dared openly speak about the loss of

friends and co-workers to illness, their own diminished health and

the increased risk that they had placed on their families. Many employees fear that exposing such health and safety problems would

jeopardize the very existence of the plant, and the thousands of

good-paying jobs it provided the community, and there are still employees that are still unwilling to come forward.

To a great extent, those who did complain to management were

labeled as ‘‘malingerers’’ or ‘‘malcontents’’ and were told that their

health complaints were ‘‘unrelated’’ or ‘‘all in their head.’’

Mr. Chairman, to me, it is unconscionable that people who were

in management could be so insensitive and uncaring about their

fellow workers. If we think about the two great commandments,

love of God, and love of fellow man, certainly that second great

commandment was broken over and over again at that plant in

terms of how they treated their fellow workers and their fellow

man.

Our witnesses today representing the workers of the Portsmouth

Gaseous Diffusion Plant have legitimate questions: What kind of

material was handled? When was it handled? What kind of exposure risk existed at the entire facility? Are there still existing

risks? And, what are the long-term health concerns of workers at

the facility and for their families?

The government and its contractors must provide clear facts regarding the risks that Piketon’s employees have endured, and the

same thing at Oak Ridge. Once those facts are known, it is necessary for the Federal Government to provide whatever health care

4

assistance is needed for those workers who have health problems

as a result of their employment at those facilities.

Last July, President Clinton appeared to take this responsibility

seriously when he announced a health initiative for DOE workers

to help both current and former employees of DOE’s nuclear facilities. This health initiative included the administration’s intent to

propose legislation compensating energy contractors exposed to beryllium and other toxic and radioactive materials. The initiative

also directed the White House’s National Economic Council to conduct an interagency review to focus on what other illnesses warrant inclusion in this program and how this should be accomplished. That report is due at the end of this month.

The administration has already acted on part of this initiative,

having had legislation introduced by Senator Bingaman that would

establish a compensation program for employees of the Department

of Energy who suffer from Chronic Beryllium Disease, what we call

CBD. Beryllium, which is a toxic substance, can cause major health

problems if proper precautions are not taken while it is being handled.

Under this bill, S. 1954, CBD sufferers would be entitled to

$100,000 in compensation. The legislation will provide a measure

of relief to workers in a handful of States, including Ohio, who are

afflicted with CBD. In addition to CBD sufferers, S. 1954 covers a

small group of workers at Oak Ridge, and establishes a pilot compensation project for workers whose illnesses may have been

caused by on-the-job exposure to radioactive substances at Paducah.

S. 1954 also provides for a shift in the burden of proof from an

employee to the Federal Government in proving an illness is jobrelated. That is a very, very important issue. Under current law,

an employee at a nuclear facility who alleges that his or her illness

is related to their job must establish a direct link in order for their

illnesses to be compensated. The problem is, many individuals were

not able to get coverage under State Workers’ Compensation because of the latency period of their disease from first exposure to

the onset of the illness. Too much time went by, so the statute of

limitations was exceeded.

As a cosponsor of S. 1954, I think it will help those workers who

suffer from CBD and ensure that workers who have been harmed

by the government can get proper and timely benefits. However,

this legislation does not address the health concerns that have

been raised by the men and women who work at the Piketon, Ohio

plant.

I would like to say, for the record, before this legislation is acted

upon by the Senate, it must be amended to include all injured

workers at the Department of Energy nuclear facilities across the

Nation, including Piketon, right across the board, all of them. Let

us not do this thing halfway.

I believe once it is amended, S. 1954 will provide relief to thousands of nuclear workers and no longer force them to undertake

the difficult task of proving their illnesses were job-related. However, early indications, and I am very concerned about this, are

that the NEC’s report due at the end of next week, will contain a

5

recommendation that will take a 180-degree turn from where they

are today.

I understand the NEC report will continue to place the burden

of proof on proving job-related illnesses on the workers’ shoulders

by establishing a process that will consider radiation dosimetry

records, age, lifestyle, and workplace hazards. Mr. Chairman, I am

concerned that if the NEC recommends this burden of proof standard, many employees will find it nearly impossible to prove that

their job was responsible for their illness.

At the public hearings in Piketon that I attended last October,

many workers stated that plant management not only did not keep

accurate dosimetry records, in some cases, they changed the dosimetry records to show lower levels of radiation exposure. They

changed them. One of our witnesses here this morning will testify

to that effect. If workers at Piketon cannot produce consistent, reliable, and factual data in order to meet this burden of proof standard, their ability to receive Workers’ Compensation benefits will be

virtually nonexistent.

Mr. Chairman, from everything that I have read, the hearing I

attended, and everything I have ascertained about the practices at

Piketon, I believe that there was a deliberate effort by management

to down play and minimize the risk to workers that were exposed

at that facility.

Energy Secretary Richardson has already set the precedent of

shifting the burden of proof to the government by way of the administration’s bill, S. 1954. It would be unfair to workers who have

already been injured and neglected by our government for the administration to back away from their own legislative proposal.

I hope that the Committee will listen closely to the testimony of

Mr. Ray and Mr. Walburn and the other witnesses that are here

today who represent countless others. This place could be filled, as

it was when I was in Piketon, with people that have stories to tell

that will break your heart. These individuals have only asked that

the U.S. Government, the government that they spent their lives

defending, acknowledge that they were made ill in the course of

doing their job and recognize that the government must take care

of them.

Sadly, because of the government’s stonewalling and denial of responsibility, the only way any of these employees will ever receive

proper restitution for what the government has done is to file a

lawsuit against the Department of Energy or their contractors. Mr.

Walburn, I understand you have been forced to do that.

Mr. Chairman, these issues have been around for more than 40

years—40 years. In 1959, there were 6 days of hearings held on the

topic of employee radiation hazards and Workers’ Compensation. In

1962, there were 4 days of hearings held on radiation Workers’

Compensation.

I believe that the brave men and women of Piketon, Oak Ridge,

and Paducah—as well as all the others that have served our Nation—deserve to know that the Federal Government was responsible for causing them illness or harm, and if so, to provide them

the care they need. The time to act is now. We have had enough

hearings over the years. Now is the time to do something to take

6

care of these people. We owe it to them. They served their country

and we have an obligation to them. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman THOMPSON. Thank you very much. I appreciate your

remarks, especially with regard to the legislation. I could not agree

with you more. I think that the legislation proposed was a first

step. It talked in terms of likelihood, which is a whole lot less than

the burden of proof necessary in most lawsuits. I think that was

on track.

But the $100,000 lump sum for a limited group of people is insufficient. It does not cover medical expenses, for example, and that

is going to be—it is one thing if you lose a limb or something like

that. Most of your medical expenses are over with. Workers’ Compensation will give you permanent, partial, or whatever, and pay

you out. But in something like this, a disease like this, it is your

medical expenses that are going to be the big item from now on,

and so that is going to have to be addressed.

I might point out, too, the reason we are in Washington, DC,

today instead of in one of these other locations, in Piketon or Oak

Ridge or other places that we could be, is because this is a national

problem and it should not be limited to the concern of people at

these locations and the media in these locations. It should be considered a matter of national concern.

The other reason is that while we want to get a limited amount

of additional information on the record with regard to some of

these problems, I do not think you have to convince the Members

of this panel that where there is this much smoke that there is

some fire, that there is some causality there. As Senator Voinovich

said, we could fill this building up many times over with people,

and I do not want you to feel like you are getting short shrift because just a handful are testifying here today, because we get information from the DOE, we get information from people on the

ground, we talk to people individually. We are monitoring these

studies. We are already convinced that there is a major problem

here.

What we need to concentrate on now is what we are going to do

about it. Usually, or ideally, I guess you should say, in solving a

problem like this, you have exposure on the one hand and you have

illnesses on the other and you see to what extent they go together.

The only problem here is that the exposure data is very, very

faulty. They did not keep adequate records. They covered up some

information. To this day, they are still redacting certain information for national security purposes, which is something we are

going to have to look at. So it is a very, very difficult thing to show

causality under these circumstances.

So our challenge is what do we do about it? How do we set up

a system that is fair, and I think the Department is trying to move

in that direction, a system that is fair in order to make this determination. Everybody that has an illness that works in a particular

place cannot be compensated simply because they have an illness.

There has got to be some kind of connection. But the burden, as

you say, the burden of proof should not be on the workers anymore

because of this history. You cannot deprive people of an opportunity to make their case and then say, you have not made your

case, which is what has happened in some cases.

7

There should be some presumptions, and I think the Department

and the administration is going to come with additional legislation,

and what we are here today, I think, to do in part is to tell the

administration, when you come with this legislation, there had better be some things in there, some basic things in there or it is not

going to go and we are going to have to do something else. I think

there need to be some presumptions, shifting of the burdens you

have talked about, some presumptions, all taking into account the

fact of this history and the fact that we cannot show causation

sometimes when perhaps we otherwise could if the records were

there and people had dealt honestly.

So that is why we are here. We want to know what the government is doing, how far along are they, where are they in terms of

this analysis. It is a big, big job. It is a tremendous job. Nobody

has ever tried to do anything like this before. There has not been

this kind of testing and sampling going on in the country with regard to anything like this before. There have been some discrete

bills passed for particular people, black lung disease and things

like that in the past, but nothing of this magnitude. It is a tremendous job. We want to know how far along are they, is Congress

doing its job. We are not necessarily providing enough funds to

move fast enough to test all these people. We want to talk about

that.

Then we want to talk about a compensation, a fair way to go

about dealing with a vast number of people and come up with a

system of fair adjudication and compensation whereby not everybody who calls in and says they want a check automatically gets

one. You have got to be honest about that. But they have a fair

chance of saying, if you had this kind of exposure or the government has kept you or contractors have kept you from showing what

the exposure is, then the burden is on the government. It is just

that simple, and you consider it on a case-by-case basis.

All of that is just to provide some background as to why I

thought it was important to have something here in Washington,

DC.

Senator Akaka, did you have any preliminary statement?

Senator AKAKA. Yes, I do.

Chairman THOMPSON. Senator Akaka.

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR AKAKA

Senator AKAKA. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I want to

thank you for holding this hearing today on health and safety

issues at the Department of Energy’s gaseous diffusion plants at

Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Piketon, Ohio. I will be brief, Mr.

Chairman.

It is indeed an honor to receive the testimony of these fine people

and I appreciate their willingness to appear before us today. I am

hopeful, like the Chairman, that the recently introduced compensation proposal will receive all due consideration.

Mr. Chairman, the issue of government compensation is one with

which I am familiar. As you may know, under the 1986 Compact

of Free Association entered into between the United States and the

Government of the Republic of Marshall Islands, a $150 million nuclear claims fund was created. The fund is to compensate MarshalVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:58 Aug 02, 2000 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00015 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 64250.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: SAFFAIRS
8

1The prepared statement of Ms. Hatfield appears in the Appendix on page 48.

lese victims of radiological exposure from U.S. nuclear testing in

the islands during the 1940’s and 1950’s. The fund is intended to

generate a perpetual source of income for potential claimants, and

I thought I would mention this to you and to the folks here.

Again, Mr. Chairman, I am very pleased to be here today with

you.

Chairman THOMPSON. Thank you very much.

Our first panel consists of four current and former workers at the

gaseous diffusion plants in Oak Ridge and Piketon. The witnesses

are Vikki Hatfield, the daughter of a former K–25 and Y–12 worker

in Oak Ridge. Thank you for being with us, Ms. Hatfield. Ann

Orick, former K–25 worker in Oak Ridge, thank you for being here.

Sam Ray, former worker at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion

Plant. Thank you, Mr. Ray. And Jeff Walburn, a current worker at

the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant.

I understand that you have opening statements. Proceed. We

have a lot of people to hear from here today, but I am not going

to limit you. Say what you have got to say. Ms. Hatfield, would you

like to begin?

Ms. HATFIELD. Sure.

Chairman THOMPSON. Excuse me. We have just been joined by

the Ranking Member. Senator Lieberman, would you like to make

any preliminary comments.

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LIEBERMAN

Senator LIEBERMAN. Mr. Chairman, thank you. I would like to

very briefly welcome the witnesses and thank you and Senator

Voinovich for the work you are doing here.

I have real concerns about the information that you brought to

my attention about the environmental safety and health issues at

the gaseous diffusion plants and I appreciate the interest and the

leadership that you both have shown. Unfortunately, because of

scheduling conflicts, I cannot stay here a long time, but I wanted

to stop by and express my support for what you are doing here and

also to spend as much time as I could hearing the folks who are

before us. I thank you very much for your courtesy.

Chairman THOMPSON. Thank you very much.

Senator VOINOVICH. We also have Congressman Strickland here,

if we could just——

Chairman THOMPSON. Would you like to introduce him?

Senator VOINOVICH. I understand that Congressman Strickland

is here today and I would like to just acknowledge his presence. He

represents that district in the State of Ohio.

Chairman THOMPSON. It is good to have him with us.

Ms. Hatfield.

TESTIMONY OF VIKKI HATFIELD,1 DAUGHTER OF FORMER

K–25 AND Y–12 WORKER, KINGSTON, TENNESSEE

Ms. HATFIELD. Good morning. Mr. Chairman and esteemed Members of the Committee, my family and I appreciate being given the

9

opportunity to speak to you on a subject that is very important to

us.

My father, Leon Meade, began working for the Department of

Energy in 1949. During this time, he worked in all the plants in

Oak Ridge. The job that we feel has impacted our family the most

is the one he had from the years of 1969 through 1985. During this

time, he worked in assembly. He was, in fact, assembling the devices that were made at the Y–12 facility, which included the handling and cutting of beryllium and asbestos.

In 1985, the company offered a retirement package, which my father accepted. My parents and grandparents owned a 150-acre

farm and my father enjoyed working on it. He retired and had four

fairly good years, and then his health began to decline.

The sickness started with a lot of pain with no apparent cause.

You must understand that for him to even complain was unusual.

He was never sick. He never took medication. We knew something

was wrong and we were advised to take him to the Mayo Clinic in

Jacksonville, Florida. We did this twice, to no avail. The doctors did

not know what was wrong. They found what they thought was evidence of early myeloma, a cancer. They could not find it in his

body. They knew something was wrong but could not figure out

what.

We also made several trips to Vanderbilt Hospital in Nashville

with the same outcome. Yes, something is very wrong, but we do

not know what it is. There were repeated trips to doctors and hospitals in Knoxville, Tennessee. He was admitted several times to

the University of Tennessee Hospital as well as Baptist Hospital.

Each time we made these trips, we always braced ourselves for the

worst. We knew that something was terribly wrong, but we still

could not get a diagnosis.

The years went on and my father grew much worse. He started

having constant pain in his lower abdomen and in his prostate. The

pain was constant. He stayed on antibiotics for over a year and

nothing changed. The pain has grown and spread.

We finally found the cause of his trouble. After one of our many

hospital stays that was for what appeared to be pneumonia, a specialist came to talk to us about where my father had worked and

what he had done. He told us that he wanted to test my father for

beryllium. Although my father understood what he was saying, the

rest of us were in the dark. We did a little research and found that

beryllium reacts as a cancer. Without someone knowing what he or

she are actually looking for, this disease can be present without

being diagnosed. This explained why the apparent cancer was

showing up. The test results showed beryllium in his lungs, asbestos coating the outside of his lungs, as well as heavy metal in his

body. These heavy metals were partly responsible for the constant

pain in his lower abdomen.

During this time, my family’s feelings were great. We finally

knew what was wrong—let’s fix it. We found out there is no fix.

We have watched a man who has been in control turn into an invalid. We have had to sell our cattle because he can’t take care of

them. We have watched his weight fall from 190 pounds when he

retired to something less than 120 pounds. He is over 6 feet tall,

so you can imagine that he is only skin and bones.

10

We try to think of things that he can or will eat. Nothing will

stay down. He can no longer go out in public. He is embarrassed

because he does not know when the vomiting will strike. He cannot

get his breath; he must have oxygen. He cannot bathe himself; he

must have help. He cannot walk without the aid of a walker. He

does not sleep at night because of the pain and because he is afraid

to die. He takes over 16 pills a day. Some days, it is hard to get

them to stay down, and other days he misses the medication because of the sickness. He does not see the benefit and we have to

talk about the need to continue to try to take the medicine.

I have not touched on how this affects my family as a whole. My

mother stays with him 24 hours a day. He does not like for her to

leave because he is afraid something will happen. My brothers and

I take turns getting the medication and groceries. One of us must

always be on standby in case of emergency. He knows that he is

dying and there is nothing that can be done. There is no cure for

Bryillious, Asbestosis, or the heavy medals in his body. We know

that his time is short, but it is his quality of life that we are concerned about.

In January, he was sick and in the hospital. When he came home and they needed to give him medication, this medication cost $500

a day. This was not possible, and the insurance would not cover it.

We need help with this. His medical expenses are rising daily. His

insurance questions his stays in the hospital because they think

the Department of Energy should be paying for his stays due to his

diagnosis. Every time we go to a doctor or hospital, we have to go

through a mountain of paperwork about who is responsible.

In the first few months of 2000, he has already had several hundred of dollars in out-of-pocket prescriptions. We can assume that

by the end of the year, if we are fortunate enough to have him that

long, and if things stay the same and he gets no worse, the cost

will be in the thousands of out-of-pocket costs. If things worsen, as

we suspect they will, the costs could easily go into the tens of thousands of dollars.

A decision by his insurance company has now been made that

limits pain medications to cancer patients. He is not diagnosed

with a cancer, so therefore his pain medication is limited. I do not

believe that my father or any former employees who are in the position he is in can make it through the day without some help.

The bottom line is really very simple. My father did his job for

over 31 years. He did it because that is what the Department of

Energy asked of him. He was not told that he was in danger and

that he was risking his life each day he was there. I believe there

was evidence that goes back as far as 1952 that proved the Department had knowledge of the beryllium and how it could affect your

health.

In December when I attended my first meeting with Dr. Michaels

and his staff, I was surprised at the number of people who came

forward to speak. I feel sorry for the people who have just been diagnosed. If they are in their late 30’s or even their 40’s, they will

have a long and expensive road to travel.

We have found the Department of Energy not to be very helpful.

They have asked my father to go to Nevada for examination, as

well as New Jersey. We have to explain to them that he can hardly

11

1The prepared statement of Mrs. Orick appears in the Appendix on page 63.

walk through the house. How can he be expected to make a trip

like that? As recently as a month ago, we did get him to Oak Ridge

because the Department wanted to run more tests. We filled out

more paperwork. Every time they want to run more tests, we go

through the same paperwork. It is all in his file and it takes a lot

of effort to get this paperwork filled out. I realize it is important,

but when it is in the file, they would not be asking him to come

forward and take these tests if they did not realize it was already

there.

My father has been retired for 14 years and 10 of these years he

has been sick. During this time, there has not been an increase in

his retirement benefits, his insurance coverage, nor has anything

been offered to help make this devastating illness easier for my

mother or the rest of my family. How can we be expected to give

him the quality of life that he deserves?

I would like to leave you with one last thought. You are in the

room with your father, a man who never cries, and you watch as

tears run down his face and he says, ‘‘All I really want is to stop

hurting and to have my health back, is that to much to ask? ’’ We

know that there is no answer to this. There is no way we can stop

or prolong what he is going through. We feel that it is time for the

country as a whole to come forward and take responsibility. I do

not know that we can do it in my father’s time. His time is very

short. But it is time to step up to the table and say, look, you did

your job. You worked hard at it. What can we do to help you at

this?

The expenses, the medicine, just having help within the family,

having someone that comes and stays and gives my mom some relief, that would be wonderful, but we need help and it is things

that the insurance companies will not help us with. I do not believe

that it is fair that my family has to take what they have set aside

for their retirement to take care of these problems. I mean, my dad

is going to be gone and my mom is still going to have to have something to live on. At the rate we are going, she is not going to have

it. It is not going to be there. We are going to wind up selling our

farm just to be able to take care of these expenses, and that is not

right. That is not the fair way for the government to react or for

the government to do business. I thank you for your time.

Chairman THOMPSON. Thank you very much, Ms. Hatfield, very

powerful. Mrs. Orick.

TESTIMONY OF ANN H. ORICK,1 FORMER K–25 WORKER,

KNOXVILLE, TENNESSEE

Mrs. ORICK. Good morning, and thank you so much for the opportunity to be here today. On behalf of the K–25 workers, we have

worked this issue now for about 5 years, when we first addressed

the medical department and they told us we could not talk about

this because it was a sensitive issue and they would not put the

things in our medical files that we were finding in our hair and in

our blood and in our urine, like the cyanides and the uraniums and

the beryllium. They did not want that in there, but they wanted

to know every time you clocked out to go to the doctor for a tonsilVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:58 Aug 02, 2000 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00019 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 64250.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: SAFFAIRS
12

lectomy or have your finger taped up where you cut it. They put

all that in, but they denied the things that pertained to what was

actually happening to our bodies.

I can relate to what this lady has said because my father worked

at Y–12 and I remember, growing up as a little girl, watching him

die. I would stand and look over the big 4-poster bed and look at

him and he would suffer and he could not breathe. At 47 years old,

he was dead, and I never did understand what happened to my

daddy. I never knew what he did. It was always so hush-hush. You

did not talk about it. But I knew he worked hard and I knew

things worried him. He worried a lot.

My husband went to work at the K–25 site after being a Vietnam

War veteran. He proudly served his country there and came home

and went to work at K–25, where he worked as a maintenance mechanic out there for almost 28 years. He was the first person diagnosed at the K–25 site with chronic beryllium disease, and, of

course, immediately we were informed that he did not get it there

because they did not have any. It is funny they did not have the

cyanide, either, that was showing in our blood. They did not have

anything that we were trying to talk to them about that was hurting us. We do not have any of that here. You could not possibly get

that here.

And so this past 5 years has been a real struggle for us. We have

worked hard to get this issue brought forth and we have suffered

and our health has gone downhill.

As for me, I would just like to tell you just a little bit of some

of the things that have been found, and I would like to do this because, Senator Thompson, you related to the fact of what we can

cover and what we cannot. It is unfortunate that most of the things

that are wrong with my body may not have scientific and medical

evidence, where some gentleman in the 1800’s has studied and

wrote a book and proved that uranium caused this or cyanide

caused that, so I may not have that solid medical proof, but I

worked in the very trenches of that site in the uranium, cleaning

it up, in the UF–6, transferring it over, in the nickel, moving it

from one vault to another, and all the hundreds of chemicals and

thousands of compounds that are out there, and we do not even

know when they are mixed together in the body, what they do. Nobody certainly has had time to look at that.

But some of the things that I suffer which relate to all of these

people back here from K–25 include things like peripheral vision

loss. We are losing our peripheral vision. They do not know why,

because it is not a specific pattern which relates to a proven eye

disease, but yet our eyes are blackening.

We all have chronic fatigue. It was an effort for me just to get

here. Even from yesterday morning, leaving, and just one plane

ride, I got to Detroit and I was so sick that we had to get a cart

to get me to the other plane. I have no energy. I am shaky. I tremble. I have to use a cane to get around.

I do not smell things anymore. I have no smell. We cannot remember things. We cannot concentrate. We have severe bone and

joint pain, and my bones are so cold that I just wrap blankets

around me all the time and sit in a chair because I am trying to

get warm.

13

1Pictures referred to appear in the Appendix on page 71.

Sway balance, all of us have lost our balance. All of us pitch. We

have no control of our balance whatsoever. We suffer severe migraine headaches, sleep disturbances. None of us sleep over 3 or 4

hours a night. We hurt. Our bodies hurt. You cannot sleep when

you are in pain.

We have heart rate problems. My heart rate at the plant when

I had the high thiocyanate readings were up to 180 beats a minute,

180 beats a minute, and still, all of us suffer with a rise in rapid

heart rate with no really explanation for them there.

Upper airway disturbances, we cannot get our breath. When the

pulmonologist went down in my lungs, he would just touch them

and they just break and bleed and they do not know why they are

so fragile, but they are, and that is what they find in these beryllium workers.

Tremors, right-sided weakness, elevated nickel levels in my

blood, and I have been gone from that plant for 5 years, but I still

have elevated nickel and aluminum readings in my blood. Gentlemen, I do not have nickel at home. There is no way I got that at

home.

Severe skin rashes—when I left there, I was so broken out with

big, huge eruptions on my skin, I looked hideous. I looked like a

young teenager with an acne problem, and they would break open

and bleed. And they tried all kinds of treatments and they could

not heal them up.

Gastrointestinal diseases, I had them make this picture 1 for you

because I want you to see that this little pinhole right here is all

that is left in my stomach. It should be this size, where they first

go in. My stomach cavity has grown together. This is the second

time in 2 years this has happened. I already had one major surgery

where they cut out a big portion and tried to make a hole for my

food. And now they think they are going to take over half my stomach and half my intestines out, which will leave me strictly on liquids which are going to pour directly through my body. I will never

be able to leave the house and do anything anymore, if I get

through the surgery, and with all the health problems, it is very,

very severe for me to face. If I do not have the surgery, in February

I was told I would live 3 to 6 months, so 6 weeks of that time has

gone. I have chosen not to do it.

I have come here today hoping that I can relay some of these

things to you. I cannot keep having major surgeries. They are not

even covered. Just yesterday before I left home, I faxed $9,000 of

unpaid medical bills down to the Lockheed Martin benefit plans

asking them, please help us with this. Some of this should be covered in some way.

We all have had shut down gallbladders. We all have nausea and

vomiting. I have nausea most of the time and am on medication

just to sit here this morning because I am so deathly sick. We have

colon problems.

We all have been diagnosed with depression. Of course, that is

the main thing with the workplace. Oh, you are just depressed. You

have a mental problem. Just get yourself a psychiatrist and you are

14

going to be just fine. Well, unfortunately, I have not found a psychiatrist yet that can fix the things that are wrong with me.

We have all kinds of other things that I could talk about here,

but I am just trying to give you a brief overlay, and this is not just

me. This is the bodies of these people that sit here today. And I

am not sticking to what I wrote down. I am sorry, but I am just

trying to talk to you from my heart. I want you to understand this

situation.

We need help. A $100,000 bill is not going to help us, and do you

know why? What happens to us in Oak Ridge is the way the disability is set up, the Lockheed Martin Met Life disability plan

takes that entire $100,000 from us, leaving us with nothing. They

recuperate their losses, they say. Well, that is fine. When are we

going to recuperate ours? The little bit of a disability check that we

are allowed, we still have to pay our insurance and that costs me

$150 a month. We still have to buy our medicines, and we never,

my husband and I never buy our medications. We cannot afford it,

$40, $50 a bottle after insurance pays, and I am on about eight

things and he is on three or four. We do not have that kind of

money. That takes more than my disability check and part of his.

We lost our home. We had to sell it. We could not do the maintenance, we were not able. Plus, we did not have the funds to keep

it anymore. So we do not even have a home. We have worked all

these years thinking that we would retire and someday maybe

have a little bit of a life, and here we are looking at making funeral

arrangements.

You know, I wanted all my life to be an organ donator. I think

that is so important. But I, unfortunately, do not have anything in

my body that is not so contaminated with uranium and plutonium

and all these other things that I can even give anything to anybody

else to help them live.

So this right here today is the only thing I can give to help these

other people live, and it is not just Oak Ridge and it is not just

Ohio, it is the country. And it is really sad, because if you had

asked us to come down there and work for this country’s national

security and you had said, now Ann, I am going to put you in here

in this highly enriched uranium and it may damage your health or

it may take your life but we need you in here because otherwise

the freedom of this country is completely gone, we could be invaded, anything could happen, and unless you do this job, everything we have worked for all these hundreds of years when we established this country is just gone, I would have went. They would

have went, if they had just told us.

And they knew. They knew from the early 1940’s what they had.

We have documentation from the DOE’s own reading rooms that

show they knew what they had, and to keep worker morale up,

they just moved you around in a job. You did not talk. You did not

discuss what you did.

But when you place workers in areas and you know they are contaminated, and even to this day, the vent systems in the newest

buildings, even outside the security fence, when you swipe them

and you run them, they have got nickel and cobalt and strontium

in the vent systems in the clean buildings. What do you think we

got?

15

1The prepared statement of Mr. Ray appears in the Appendix on page 72.

You have got to realize that a bill limited to certain diseases or

certain scientific proof is not going to work for somebody like me.

I worked hard for all of you to live here in this country, free and

secure from whatever. I would do it again. But I would have expected that this country be truthful and tell me what I am facing.

They did not have to disclose the classified issues. They could have

just said, this may make you sick but we will try to help you. We

will try to treat you. We will get you to a doctor. Unfortunately,

we do not have doctors in that area that have the expertise to even

try to work with us, and if they do, they are run off like Dr. Reed

was. They are run off. They are cut off the medical plan.

So it is very difficult for us to go anywhere and we are not even

treatable. But maybe we could offer a little bit of help for the medicines or for whatever that we cannot afford to go do, and maybe

we could offer a little bit of help for the future for those workers

that may still be in that, that we just may go ahead and tell them

and right now get them somewhere and get them some help where

they will not be in the situation I am in, with 3 to 6 months to live.

I have not said anything I have come here to say, but I hope you

will read my testimony.

Chairman THOMPSON. Oh, absolutely.

Mrs. ORICK. I tried to be very, very distinct with it and I appreciate it. Thank you.

Chairman THOMPSON. Absolutely. Thank you. You are a very eloquent spokesman for an awful lot of people, and you, too, Ms. Hatfield.

Chairman THOMPSON. Mr. Ray.

TESTIMONY OF SAM RAY,1 FORMER PORTSMOUTH GASEOUS

DIFFUSION PLANT WORKER, LUCASVILLE, OHIO

Mr. RAY. Thank you very much. Good morning, Mr. Chairman

and Members of the Committee. Hopefully, you can understand me.

I am Sam Ray, a former uranium enrichment worker at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant.

I was hired in 1954 and worked as a production operator and instrument mechanic. In May 1994, I was diagnosed with a rare type

of bone cancer, chondrosarcoma. As a result, I had to have my larynx removed. At that point, I had no option but to take a disability

retirement. My understanding is that there are two things that

cause my type of cancer. One is Paget’s disease, which I did not

have, and the other is radiation exposure, which I did have. It is

well documented that certain uranium compounds are bone seekers. I might add, I have never smoked a day in my life. They are

two different types of cancers.

But I am not here today to talk about myself. I am here to describe how, with the benefit of Cold War secrecy, the government

and its contractors made decisions that traded off our well-being

for the convenience of the production and I am here to ask you for

your help in passing legislation to help remedy some of these

wrongs. And I just might add, basically, the two ladies who are sitting here, this would be beneficial to them if we could get some of

this legislation passed.

16

From 1961 to 1978, Portsmouth operated a facility that converted

highly enriched uranium, HEU, oxides into feed material. Much of

this oxide, 87 percent enriched, was shipped in from the Idaho

chemical processing plant. A good friend of mine, Robert Elkins,

worked in the oxide plant from 1962 to 1965. By 1965, he was

placed on permanent restriction due to high internal body counts

of radiation. He had enriched uranium, technetium, neptunium, potassium, and cesium in his body. When he retired in 1985, 20 years

later, he was still on permanent restriction. In the 15 years since

retirement, the plant management has never contacted him to

check on his health or suggest that he receive post-retirement monitoring.

However, Mr. Elkins was contacted by an individual from Hanford, Washington, presumably the transuranium registry, who

wanted to pay $500 for his body so the government could study

what happened to the radiation in his body after he passed away.

His wife would receive the $500 upon his death. They both declined

the offer. It would appear the government is more interested in

what happens to Mr. Elkins after he is dead than what happens

to him while he is still alive. Other workers in this area were

placed on work restriction due to radiation exposures, and unfortunately, many of them have passed away.

DOE knew this facility was unsafe. A 1985 DOE report states,

‘‘the oxide conversion facility was not able to maintain adequate

containment of the radioactive materials during operating periods.

As such, the decision was made in the 1977 time frame to shut

down that facility pending modifications to provide adequate containment measures. These modifications were never funded and

the facility has not operated since.’’

The Portsmouth plant’s radiation dosimetry programs have been

woefully inadequate. For example, NIOSH discovered that between

1954 and 1992, the site never measured for neutron exposures.

Uranium deposits in the cascade causes neutron emissions.

When I was hired in 1954, process operators were not allowed to

wear coveralls or safety shoes. Your clothing became contaminated.

We took this contamination home with us on our clothing and

shoes. Sometime in the 1960’s, coveralls became operational for

process operators. However, it was not until the 1990’s when contamination controls were implemented that they became mandatory. In reality, they should have always been mandatory.

Until the mid-1970’s, our respirator protection consisted of World

War II Army assault masks. It was years later that we learned

that these were not adequate to block the radionucleides or toxic

chemicals.

Due to the lack of a contamination control program, certain

buildings were becoming more contaminated. Equipment would

malfunction and process gases, UF–6, would leak to the atmosphere. On one occasion, it was so bad that it looked like a fog moving up through the building. The building is about a half-mile long.

After one major release in a withdrawal area, there were green icicles with crystallized uranium hexafluoride hanging from the ceiling and I beams.

While management assured workers there was no hazard at the

uranium enrichment facility in Portsmouth, it warned supervisors

17

1The prepared statement of Mr. Walburn appears in the Appendix on page 84.

in a 1962 memo, ‘‘We do not expect nor desire that the philosophy

will be openly discussed with bargaining unit employees. Calculations of contamination indices should be handled by the general

foreman and keep as supervisional information in deciding the

need for decontamination.’’

Heavy metals were a major hazard at Portsmouth. Between 1981

and 1990, decontamination workers were exposed to mercury up to

175 times the OSHA threshold limit.

Correctly, I am a retiree representative for the Worker Health

Protection Program, which is funded under Section 3162 through

DOE funding. It gives former workers a one-time complete physical. When I talk to former workers and retirees, I find out how little they knew about what they were exposed to. I get calls from

widows whose husbands have passed away with cancers. They

want to know if their spouses’ exposure in the workplace caused

their illness.

I would like to summarize by offering several recommendations

for Congress to consider. No. 1, worker compensation legislation

must cover radiation-exposed workers at all DOE sites, not just Paducah. The administration’s bill does not go far enough.

No. 2, worker compensation legislation, to be of any real value,

must shift the burden of proof for causation to the government. The

government’s failure to properly monitor for radiation and toxic

hazards eliminates the evidence to prove causation. This imposes

an insurmountable burden of proof on the victim.

No. 3, the current medical training program funded under Section 3162 should go even further, with lifetime annual medical

monitoring.

No. 4, we need fully-paid medical insurance for displaced or retired workers. A medigap supplement should be fully funded by the

government for retired nuclear workers.

No. 5, workers at Portsmouth and Paducah face a unique problem with retiree health care benefits. Since USEC was privatized,

it assumed responsibility for the Lockheed Martin retiree health

care benefits program. However, these benefits could be in jeopardy

if USEC, as many predict, will fall into bankruptcy or liquidate in

several years. Unlike pensions, retiree health care benefits are not

guaranteed under ERISA. We need legislation to guarantee that

these health benefits will be delivered as intended.

I would like to thank the Committee for the opportunity to express the problems that the workers at nuclear facilities are having. Thank you.

Chairman THOMPSON. Thank you very much, Mr. Ray. I appreciate it. Mr. Walburn.

TESTIMONY OF JEFFERY B. WALBURN,1 CURRENT GUARD

WITH RESTRICTION, PORTSMOUTH GASEOUS DIFFUSION

PLANT, GREENUP, KENTUCKY

Mr. WALBURN. Mr. Chairman, and Senators, I would like to say

that I am glad to be here. John Game, my union representative

that sits behind me, had to represent me all week as the company

that I worked for, the U.S. Enrichment Corporation, was trying to

18

lay me off under ADA concerns because they no longer wanted to

accommodate my disability. When the light of the Senate shown on

them, they put their teeth away. They do not bite so hard in the

light, and I am here. Through the work of John Game, I am here.

Mr. Chairman, honorable Senators, thank you for allowing me to

testify today. My name is Jeffrey Walburn. I live in Greenup, Kentucky. I have worked at the plant for 23 years plus. My job title

is Security Inspector. I also served as a councilman from 1987 to

1995 in the City of Portsmouth, Ohio, and I was vice mayor there

for 2 years.

I was injured in an industrial accident in the 326 process building on July 26, 1994, which has left me working but restricted. I

have permanent injuries to my upper airways and lungs, a condition known as RADS. I feel I did not get proper medical treatment

at that time at their clinic, and I had a hospital stay that was

very—it stays with me. I will never get it out of my mind. I believe

that there have been efforts at the Portsmouth plant to criminally

cover up the details of this accident.

Hon. Senators, it is not my own injury that I come here to testify

about today. I am here to report the details of illegal actions taken

by the subcontractor, Lockheed Martin Utility Systems, surrounding the event. There is a discovery of facts stemming from the

independent and long-running investigation by myself, through the

efforts of John Game and others in UPGWA, Herman Potter in the

Oil and Chemical Workers Union, now known as PACE, and many

others, along with the NIOSH.

This investigation is supported heavily by documentation as well

as the testimony of two whistleblowers, which we believe reveals

criminal activity. I believe it extends into the previous history of

the plant under Goodyear Atomic Corporation, and I also believe

that the knowledge of these actions are also known by the U.S. Enrichment Corporation management, as well as the DOE.

Our investigation of my injury has revealed the following. Altering of documents—I have two medical diagnoses, one original, and

one altered.

Suppressed documentation—there is a 41-page internal report,

POEF 150–96–0088, dated February 17, 1996, from Don Butler, Security Investigator, Lockheed Martin Utility Systems, to Dan

Hupp, Security Manager, reference management of dosimetry programs. It is my understanding that the Committee has received

about 10 of those pages that came to us. The unions, both unions

have asked repeatedly in written form and been denied this report.

In the depositions of the individuals who were highlighted in this

report, they did testify in Federal deposition that because I was

going to file a lawsuit, that my dosimetry was ordered to be

changed to zero. Then, because someone got cold feet, they came

in a back door in the dosimetry program that no one knows how

they get in, but they can come and go at will and make your dosimetry a tailor-made reading to read what they want it to read.

Destruction of government documents. The dosimetry records of

Jeffrey Walburn were ordered changed to zero because he was

going to file a lawsuit.

Falsifying of government documents, lying to government investigators. The day myself and Paul Walton, this individual will

19

never be back to work. He was not treated. I spent an 11-day hospital stay. My wife happens to be a nurse and I was lucky. I was

also lucky that a new pulmonologist came into town, Dr. Ellie

Saab, who is a pulmonary specialist. The plant would not divulge

what we were exposed to. They still stand and have testified in

Federal deposition in December 1994 that we were only exposed to

low-level fluorine, and I am here to tell you today that my wife, as

she held me in her arms, witnessed my lung linings bubble out my

nose and mouth. My hair fell out. I had intestinal insult. I beg to

differ with them.

Illegal entry into a secure system of records for the express purpose to present a false dosimetry history at the Portsmouth site.

There is a back door, or was. It may have been closed. But the historic fact is, there was a back door in our dosimetry. The records

are not accurate or believable. NIOSH’s investigation of dosimetry

practices at Portsmouth, they threw our dosimetry into an administrative bucket, assigned to no one. They averaged our dose. Say we

were in this building and this table was a building and it was a

quarter-mile long and an eighth of a mile wide, and where I

worked here was very hot, and where Ms. Hatfield and Mrs. Orick

worked was not hot, a quarter of a mile away, and I come up with

a high reading. They said, oh, my, we cannot have that. Let us average their reading and assign that to Mr. Walburn, and that is the

reading I got. And I am here to tell you today that the reading I

got during my injury that they zeroed was an average, and then

it was changed back through a back door, no one knows how, to

an average again. I do not know what my reading is, nor do they

or anyone else.

They destroyed badges. They hung a badge on the wall with a

bar code that they would bar code and assign to an individual. If

they did not like the readings, give them another reading. Assign

part of that reading to one person, another person, spread it out.

Let us not have a high reading.

Failure to check for neutron radiation—I think that has been explained here by Mr. Ray. Evidence of high doses not reported—

there is a Mr. Rensky with the NIOSH that has a report that

should be gotten, and the fact that they were reluctant to divulge

the fact that this was going on because it is a problem.

I do not know how many reports I have read in the DOE system

of investigation that state, there is no evidence of injury because

the records do not reflect. Ladies and gentlemen, I am here today

to report that dosimetry records at Portsmouth have been altered.

Sick workers, but no reason. Dead workers, but no cause. How can

this be? I believe there has been deliberate action on the part of

the plant subcontractors to defraud under DOE oversight. There

has been an absence of checks and balances, and as I said at

Piketon, you got a meter to check for neptunium, plutonium. Tyranny is something that is hard to define or see, but it must be

stopped.

The DOE wants to offer settlement which makes the worker

prove how they were hurt but grants themself and the subcontractors that work for them immunity from prosecution. I ask you,

what did DOE know and when did they know it? Health screenings

are a great preventative medicine, but they are not compensation.

20

I want to know if the privatization agreement was properly

struck under the Federal certificate of compliance. Were the workers at Portsmouth and Paducah set adrift in a leaky boat with sick

and injured workers by the DOE? Were we indentured to a private

group, only to be scuttled later with no survivors and no reparations coming to our widows because the record did not reflect? If

those records were falsified, they cannot reflect.

I am here today to call for a full and independent third party investigation of the DOE and their relationship with their subcontractors. DOE investigating themselves is like asking the fox if

all the chickens are well in the henhouse.

We, as a group, have been fought at every turn concerning Workers’ Compensation. We have been made to appear as malingerers

or just plain whiners. We are neither. We are Cold War veterans

and we suffer from nuclear workers’ syndrome. We deserve compensation.

So you say, what have we done to bring this to light? We have

reported timely, dutifully, and often. I myself have reported to the

DOE’s Inspector General twice. DOE turned the matter over to

USEC to investigate their own subcontractor. They found the evidence of the dosimetry falsification and back door and either did

not know what to do or did nothing, but they did nothing. I have

notified the NRC Region 3. Now they are the regulators. Now they

know what DOE knows.

The Department of Labor is doing currently a glow curve check,

and I am not a technician so I cannot explain that. You will have

to ask the technical groups. I have contacted the NIOSH. I contacted the FBI. They all point at DOE.

I notified Congressman Strickland from my hospital bed when I

was injured. I had to con my mother-in-law to plug the phone in

because my wife was scared. She did not want anyone to know, and

she said, ‘‘My God, do not do that, Jeff.’’ I said, he is a friend, he

is a Methodist preacher, he is a psychologist, and he is a Congressman of the United States, and he has stayed with me on this and

he has been out of term and came back in. He was in the 103rd

Congress and he is still with me on this, and I appreciate that and

I want to thank him here today.

I want to thank Senators DeWine and Voinovich for coming to

Piketon. They heard some of the most gut-wrenching testimony. It

did not sound like something that would come from this country or

that would be done against the workers of this country, that defended this country. They were informed at the Piketon hearings.

I gave a hanging file box of evidence backing the information I

am providing today to Congressman Strickland. I sent a duplicate

copy to Secretary Richardson’s personal staff outlining the very

wrongs I have presented and have informed the EH–10 Executive

staff of the details, intimately of its contents. I am told that the

DOE has lost their copy.

Given the gravity of the information, possibly criminal, that was

in that box, I cannot understand why they have not asked for a replacement of this information. John Game, my representative, offered. He said, we will give you a copy. Call Congressman Strickland. He would be glad to share that information. In fact, he would

like to have some answers about that information.

21

There is something wrong at the Portsmouth plant, something

which may very well point to the cause throughout the industry of

why workers are sick and dead. I hope you will find out, Senators.

Thank you for allowing me to speak.

Chairman THOMPSON. Thank you, Mr. Walburn.

I do not know when I have heard a more impressive and disturbing group of witnesses. I thank all of you for being here today.

I know this is something that you have been living with for a long

time, and if I were in your shoes, I would be wondering what has

taken so long. This is not a new matter. The evidence has been

there for a long time that we have got a severe problem. Sometimes

it takes a long time, unfortunately, but I really do believe that we

are at a stage now where we are beginning to get the right kind

of attention and the right kind of focus and moving in the right direction.

There are people of good will in all branches of government and

there are people in all branches of government not of good will. You

cannot have a blanket indictment or a blanket exoneration of anybody. It is our job to do the painstaking work of figuring out which

is which, and we are committed to that.

I want a little bit more detail with regard to some of your testimony. Ms. Hatfield, your father’s situation, indeed, tragic. You

have heard him talk about it, I am sure, many, many times. I

would like to get from you and from Mrs. Orick, also, what you can

tell us about the atmosphere during those years. What period of

time did your father work at the plant?

Ms. HATFIELD. He started in 1949 and he retired in 1985.

Chairman THOMPSON. Mrs. Orick, what was your time of service?

Mrs. ORICK. From 1984 until 1996.

Chairman THOMPSON. I would like to get the comparison, really,

between the two periods of time. Was your father required to wear

protective equipment? Was there discussion about safety issues

with regard to the people who were running it at that time? Was

your father mindful of those things himself? What was the atmosphere like during that period of time?

Ms. HATFIELD. My understanding is, and Daddy and I have

talked about this, and he was not told that what he was doing was

harmful. They did just, back in my recollection, when I remember

what he would and would not talk about, I mean, it just was not

talked about. And even now, he still adheres to that. You know,

there are things you just do not talk about. But he was never told

that he was in jeopardy in any way. They did not tell him——

Chairman THOMPSON. That was back during part of the time

when they had the place just fenced off.

Ms. HATFIELD. Yes.

Chairman THOMPSON. One of my best friends was Senator

Baker’s person in Tennessee, Bill Hamby from Oak Ridge. He used

to talk about that, growing up there and his father and so forth.

A lot of people do not understand what it was like back in the

1940’s.

Ms. HATFIELD. It was very hard, and they did not—they took

showers, of course, but they did also tell us at a later date that

they could have even brought it home and passed it on to other

members in the family, just by not getting everything cleaned up.

22

But they did later, not when he first started, but later, right before

his retirement, they did have respirators and that type of thing,

but not at first. They did not have it at first.

Chairman THOMPSON. I think it is probably fair to say that even

the government back in the beginning of all this did not fully appreciate or have the knowledge of really what they were dealing

with or the significance of it. But as time went on, they began to

learn more and more. By the time Mrs. Orick was there, I think

they knew what the deal was. You have heard Ms. Hatfield’s testimony. What about the situation when you were there, Mrs. Orick?

Did you wear protective gear?

Mrs. ORICK. I did.

Chairman THOMPSON. I understand you worked as a radiation

health physics technician, traveling all over the site. And you encountered various situations where the radiation limits were above

the DOE limits and so forth.

Mrs. ORICK. Oh, the radiation readings would be in the millions

and the DOE limit on beta would be 5,000 and alpha 1,000, and

we would be encountering things up in the millions of disintegrations per minute, which is highly radioactive.

At first when I went out there, I was hired as a clerk. I was to

do data packages, assemble data packages. I was not even supposed to be associated with any type of sampling, but I was immediately split into a sampling group where I carried and handled all

samples that had come in from not only K–25, but Rocky Flats,

Hanford, and all the other sites, and they were filthy. They did not

have lids on them. They were broken open. And I had to repackage

those, gather them up, carry——

Chairman THOMPSON. So you came in contact with whatever was

in there?

Mrs. ORICK. I did, and I was——

Chairman THOMPSON. There was no way for you to know what

all was in there.

Mrs. ORICK. I was not even given a pair of gloves, and I carried

this stuff up next to my body, down the stairs, so I could get it to

a big table like this. I ate my lunch on this table with this stuff

sitting all around me, and I did that for a couple of years, and I

have had six breast tumors—six. And then I would carry that stuff

down into one of the old closed process buildings, and I cannot remember if it was 27 or 29 because they adjoined, and I was never

given any protective clothing to go in there, either, and that would

have been one of the worst buildings on that site.

Then after I went into radiation protection, we were in all the

areas. There is not a place out there that I have not been in, and

because I was a smaller person, I may have to lay down and crawl

up under things or get on top of—buildings are inside of buildings,

and you would climb the ladder to get from one rooftop to another

to get your job done. And the only time that I ever was offered a

respirator was when I did one transfer of UF–6 (uranium

hexaflouride). All the other times and all of my work jobs daily, regardless of what I was in, I was never one time offered a respirator.

Now, my husband, who worked there 28 years—I hope they have

given you this picture——

23

1Picture of Mr. Orick referred to appears in the Appendix on page 70.

Chairman THOMPSON. Yes.

Mrs. ORICK. This is how he looked.1 This is his protection right

here, and if you will notice, it is all over his face. He is dripping

wet. This is his clothes. He would go change several times a day.

There is no protective equipment here. And he might work next to

the person where they were manufacturing certain things and

he——

Chairman THOMPSON. Is this him coming off a shift here?

Mrs. ORICK. This is in the middle of one.

Chairman THOMPSON. In the middle of it?

Mrs. ORICK. Yes.

Chairman THOMPSON. And he has got all kinds of things, it looks

like, splashed all over him.

Mrs. ORICK. Exactly. The powders would be so full in the air that

he did not even see his partner that was working next to him. And

the respirators, if they were issued one, would last them for 6 to

8 weeks. They would just put them in their locker, get them back

out and put them back on and use them for 6 or 8 weeks. They

cost money and they did not want to issue one.

Chairman THOMPSON. So there was never really any discussion

or concern or warnings or anything like that, even if——

Mrs. ORICK. There was discussions to a point, but there was—

we were trying to do postings at that time, but up until all of those

years, there was nothing posted to tell you there was a beryllium

area. They kept saying they did not have any. We documented 34

buildings that did. There was never a posting.

Chairman THOMPSON. There was beryllium at K–25 and——

Mrs. ORICK. Exactly.

Chairman THOMPSON [continuing]. Y–12, and 20 sites across the

DOE complex. No one uses beryllium in the form that causes this

kind of a problem besides DOE and the Department of Defense.

Mrs. ORICK. No, sir, and it is that way with the other compounds

that they had there. No one else uses certain materials like what

we did. And some of my duties would be to go in some of the places

that had been shut down since the early 1940’s and 1950’s, and I

would have to go in and these things would be busted open and I

would have to try to clean that up and get a reading on it before

I could allow anybody else to touch it. I never knew what it

was——

Chairman THOMPSON. If you were required to sit down and list

all the things you were exposed to, there would be no way in the

world.

Mrs. ORICK. No, sir.

Chairman THOMPSON. You were exposed to everything that came

across——

Mrs. ORICK. Yes, sir. That is what I am trying to say.

Chairman THOMPSON. As you say, the combination of things.

Mrs. ORICK. Yes.

Chairman THOMPSON. We have no idea, with all the sophistication we have got——

Mrs. ORICK. We do not know, no.

24

Chairman THOMPSON [continuing]. And medical science today,

we have no idea of the reaction of the human body with various

combinations of things working together.

Mrs. ORICK. No, sir. But those areas that we were in, sir, I really

believe that the contractor in the DOE did have knowledge of most

of the areas, and they should have been listed on our work schedule. You are entering an area where you need a respirator or a

Tyvek suit or a pair of gloves or whatever. But that just did not

happen routinely like it should.

Chairman THOMPSON. You mentioned in your testimony that

your husband’s medical records have been partially redacted.

Mrs. ORICK. They have, sir. They have cut out the main items.

It says, he was exposed to, and they blacked them out. The proper

thing to have done, if there was an issue with classification, would

have been blocked out the area and then maybe we could have

sought treatment for whatever the material was. But they did it

the other way, so now we cannot even know what that is.

Chairman THOMPSON. Well, I bet we can. [Laughter and applause.]

This means that your husband is unaware of everything that he

was exposed to?

Mrs. ORICK. Absolutely, as are all of these other workers.

Chairman THOMPSON. What about his physicians? Were they

given access to this?

Mrs. ORICK. No, sir. They have these——

Chairman THOMPSON. Well, how can they treat him properly if

they do not even know what they are dealing with?

Mrs. ORICK. Sir, they cannot, and that is one of the issues here.

We are not being treated. There is no treatment. We have been

tested to death. We have been tested to death for 5 years, 20 tubes

of blood at one time here and 20 tubes of blood there, and we still

do not know what the results are, and we are never going to have

them because they are just dragging on and dragging on and it

looks good that we are getting tested. But we are not getting treated, and there is a difference.

Chairman THOMPSON. Absolutely.

Ms. HATFIELD. Could I just say that we have gone through the

same thing and the same issues, and for my dad, it is almost discouraging and encouraging to get him to go to the doctor because

he keeps saying, why do I want to go, because there is nothing they

can do for me. All they are going to do is draw more blood and do

more tests and wear me out and I am still not going to know any

more than I know right now and we are going to be out the money

and we are going to be out all these things and I am going to take

16 more pills a day that are not going to do me any good.

And so it is the same issue. Every time they call you, every time

you go take a test, it is the same thing. Let us take bunches of

blood, but they still do not give you any answers to any questions.

There are no answers.

Chairman THOMPSON. Thank you very much. Senator Voinovich.

Senator VOINOVICH. I think that what I have heard today just

builds on what I heard when I was down in the Piketon to hear

the testimony of so many of you. What I have tried to do during

my life is to try and respond to the real problem. The real problem

25

right now is that a lot of people need medical care, compensation

so that they can at least have some response to the conditions that

they now have, and the longer we wait, the worse it gets.

I think that our job in this Committee is to start moving the ball

as fast as we possibly can, put the pressure on the administration,

get them to step up to the table. We may have to come up with

some more money, Mr. Chairman, to get on with this.

One of the things that always bothers me as a new Senator is

that we have all kinds of priorities and lots of new ones. We forget

about the other priorities that we have. We do not see the people

in the homes that are sick. We do not see the families that have

had to live with the death of a loved one and the costs that were

there that ravaged them so that they have nothing, as you pointed

out, Mrs. Orick.

We have an obligation to get on with this. Now, there are a lot

of things, criminal, all of this stuff. It is there. That is something

that we can deal with, but we ought not to wait until we get all

the answers to all the questions because we will be here 6 years

from now before we get all the answers to all the questions.

So let us get on with it. Let us respond. Let us come up with

something that is fair. I thought that the recommendations here,

I think Mr. Walburn in your testimony recommended actions for

Congress, or were they from Mr. Ray?

Chairman THOMPSON. Mr. Ray.

Senator VOINOVICH. Mr. Chairman, I think there are some pretty

good recommendations here and I think that they go beyond what

is in the current legislation.

Chairman THOMPSON. I do, too. I mentioned to staff when he finished that that we need to take those and look at them, because

we are going to be apart from where I think and you think the administration is going to come out on this, I am afraid.

Mr. RAY. Well, I would just like to comment that Congressman

Strickland’s bill, H.R. 3495, would help Mrs. Orick. And also, I

would like to follow up on what Mrs. Orick was talking about,

going into different buildings. What it is called is contamination

control, and apparently most if not all nuclear facilities lacked real

contamination control. We are getting better at Portsmouth, but

maybe people do not understand when we are talking about contamination.

Maybe as an example, say this room was contaminated and you

were not aware of it. We all come in, we sit down. There is no way

for us to know that. You cannot smell it. You cannot see it. We are

here. We have got it on our hands. It is airborne. And we have had

this for a number of years. We are sending craft people onto jobs

that they were not familiar with what was involved in a job. It may

be a contaminated area they go in. They go ahead and do their job,

not knowing it was contaminated.

Senator VOINOVICH. Records have been tampered with, and then

at the Mound plant we have in Ohio, DOE has been doing these

studies to try and ascertain what the dosage was to figure out

whether or not these people were exposed to whatever it was for

5 years. But when you look through a record and you see what has

gone on and all of the unconscionable things that went on, the deliberate things to keep people uniformed, tamper with documents,

26

and so on, that logic finally dictates that you do not wait 5 years

to figure out that people have been affected.

I mean, logic tells you that if individuals have been exposed to

this and there is a higher, much higher incidence of a particular

thing and the only thing that could have caused it would be their

exposure to their plant facility, then logic says that the burden

should be on the government to prove that it is not connected.

As I say, we do need to get on with this, and that is all I can

say to you. We will do what we can to move on and start getting

some help out there and not wait 3 years before something happens

in this Congress, and I am hoping that the representatives of the

administration understand the urgency of this. These are God’s

children that are there, that are sick, who need help, who are not

getting the insurance coverage that they need and medical help

that they need, and in some cases, just the money to survive. We

ought to get on with it.

Ms. HATFIELD. What we might, and I guess we have kind of

skirted it, I talked a little bit about it and I know that Ann did,

too, the diseases that my father has, there are no cures for those.

He is terminally sick, and that is a very hard thing to look at in

your face every single day. My dad knows that he is dying. There

is no help for him.

What price do we put on that? What price do we put on the fact

that he did his job, he did it the way he was supposed to do it, just

as Ann did, just as all these people have done, and these people

in the audience, too. What price do we put on that? They have actually, in fact, given up their life by doing their job. That is a hard

decision to make and it is a hard thing to have to look at every

single day.

As I was writing what I was going to say to you all, I kind of

skirted around my father for 2 days and I would not let him read

it. I kind of skirted it a little bit and I thought, I really do not want

you to read this because I did not want it to impact him or affect,

having to read about that, about what I was going to say. And I

thought, well, he is going to hear it, so he might as well read it.

But it is very hard to look at that every day and know that he

may not make it to another birthday. He may not make it to another Christmas. And I know we all face that every day, but this

is through no fault of his own, just like it is no fault that these people are as sick as they are. It is not their fault. It is not something

that—they would change it tomorrow if they could. I mean, if he

could get his health back and he could go out and do his farm, he

would love that. That would be wonderful, and that would be the

only payment he needs. But that is not going to happen. So what

we have to look at is how to make them as comfortable as we can

with the time they have left.

Mr. WALBURN. Senator Voinovich, I think something I would like

to say, and I believe that you will follow up those other things, but

what we are looking for immediately is some relief in our homes,

relief from the day-to-day fight and struggle. If you look at 17

plants and their employees as a class of people, there is bound to

be money in the government for research to take us as a class. If

you looked at it as a syndrome, the nuclear workers’ syndrome,

find the money through research.

27

We need relief in our house, and I have told you this. They have

woven theirself into my house. I would like them out.

Ms. HATFIELD. Exactly.

Mr. WALBURN. They do not belong in my house. I deserve to get

a chance to get off point and come home and relax. There is no relaxation in my home.

Ms. HATFIELD. That is right.

Mr. WALBURN. My son says, ‘‘Dad, do you have a job tomorrow?’’

I said, the best I know, son, but my wife says she will live in the

woods with me, so I said, OK, we could do that if we had to. I do

not think we are going to have to. But look at us as a class, because there is not me, not them. It is 17 plants, many thousands

of employees that are a class of people that have suffered a syndrome.

Senator VOINOVICH. I think that that is a very good point. I also

think that we need to, particularly with Paducah and with Piketon,

to look at the financial condition of the company that is there and

what could happen in terms of whatever health care coverage that

the current workers have and those that are not now working. So

that is another issue.

But the point I am making is that we need to get on with this,

get some legislation passed, get some help out there to the people

that are there. How do you deal with the loss? I do not know. You

are never going to compensate that.

Ms. HATFIELD. No.

Senator VOINOVICH. But we do know that there are people that

are sick out there and they need help. They need medical care.

They ought not to be worrying about giving up, selling their farm

and not having the money to pay for the prescription drugs that

they need and some of those things. They ought not to have that

worry. At least, they ought not to have that worry. So I think we

can deal with that.

And then the issue of, maybe in terms of medical response and

how do you deal with some of these conditions, Mr. Chairman, we

sure increased the budget of the NIH 30 percent this last time.

They might be able to take a little piece of that money and say,

these are people that gave their lives for their country and they are

suffering and maybe we ought to see if we cannot have them look

into seeing if there are some things that they can do that will

maybe respond to some of these medical problems that some doctors cannot seem to understand how to take care of. That is all, Mr.

Chairman.

Chairman THOMPSON. Thank you very much for your leadership

in this area, Senator Voinovich, and we are going to work together

and we are going to get something done.

Thank you very much for being here today. We again know you

represent a large number of people, but you have done it very eloquently and very effectively and you have gotten the ear of a wide

variety of people here today that we never had before. So you made

a major contribution toward this.

Now we need to move on and talk about doing something about

it. What are we doing about it now? What are we doing about it?

That is our next panel. Thank you for being with us here this

morning. [Applause.]

28

1The prepared statement of Dr. Michaels appears in the Appendix on page 86.

We are going to proceed immediately to our second panel. The

witnesses are Dr. David Michaels, Assistant Secretary for Environment, Safety, and Health at the U.S. Department of Energy, and

Dr. Steven Markowitz, Professor and Director, Center for the Biology of Natural Systems at Queens College, City University of New

York, in Flushing, New York.

Thank you, gentlemen, for being with us here today. Dr. Michaels, please proceed with your testimony. Your written remarks

will be entered into the record, so if you would, summarize those

for us. Dr. Michaels?

TESTIMONY OF DAVID MICHAELS,1 PH.D., MPH, ASSISTANT

SECRETARY FOR ENVIRONMENT, SAFETY AND HEALTH, U.S.

DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY, WASHINGTON, DC

Dr. MICHAELS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and Senator Voinovich. I greatly appreciate the opportunity to be here today to discuss the Department of Energy’s response to allegations of environment, safety, and health problems at the gaseous diffusion plants

in Piketon, Ohio, Paducah, Kentucky, and Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

First, let me thank both of you for your very important leadership on behalf of the workers at Oak Ridge and Portsmouth plants.

I know each of you has spent many hours listening to your constituents and working to find ways to help them. Your persistence

and your focus over the past several months have been important

to the administration, as well.

I would also like to thank the witnesses who are on this panel

as well as the people in this audience who came from great distance to tell us their stories. It takes great courage to do that and

we are very grateful.

When the concerns of exposures at the gaseous diffusion plants

were brought to the attention of Secretary Richardson last summer,

he immediately ordered complete and independent investigations.

He further committed to determine that if workers were made ill

because of poor worker protection, to seek to provide them with fair

compensation. Let me emphasize that this commitment extends to

workers at all three gaseous diffusion plants, not just Paducah, and

across the entire DOE complex.

The Secretary also directed my office to conduct a number of

other activities, to expand ongoing worker medical monitoring at

the three sites, to determine actual worker doses, and to complete

a so-called mass flow study to understand how much recycled uranium was generated over 47 years and where it all went.

As the Committee knows, our independent oversight office has

completed its comprehensive review at Paducah and submitted a

final report last month, which is another public record. Our team

is at the Portsmouth site as we speak and we expect to complete

our work there in May. Last week, the team was in Oak Ridge for

initial scoping and we expect the Oak Ridge review to be completed

in late August.

At Portsmouth, we have had an investigative team of 23 technical experts at the site for more than 6 weeks. In addition to

reviewing boxes of documents, they interviewed more than 240

29

workers. While we are not yet in the position to discuss our findings from the Portsmouth investigation, I can share several observations based on these interviews.

As with Paducah, we have heard concerns that, in the past, safety concerns took second place to production, to schedule, and to

cost, even when management was aware of safety problems. We

have heard concerns that radiation protection practices were sloppy. For example, it was common practice for operators to remove

gloves from the glove boxes to conduct some operations.

Just as you have heard today, we have heard concerns about the

adequacy of dosimetry programs and possible falsification of dosimetry records. We have heard concerns that radioactive wastes were

improperly disposed of in certain areas and were not properly identified.

In particularly, I would like to address Mr. Walburn’s concerns.

I was very pleased he brought that up today. I would like to follow

up on that box of materials. I checked into this. The staff person

who was sent that is no longer at DOE, but I would like to arrange

to get another copy, if I can. I will personally pursue it, and we can

certainly arrange for the copying costs, if I can do that with you.

Let me emphasize that we are fully investigating all these allegations and that they relate to the historical operation of the plant,

not to current conditions. I know the Committee has expressed interest in seeing certain documents. I assure the Chairman we will

share all documents once our analyses are complete in a few short

weeks. I know you understand that to ensure the integrity of the

investigative process, we need to follow careful procedures and not

release information in a haphazard or careless way.

The mass flow project, the exposure assessment project, and the

medical monitoring project are all described in my testimony, as

well as that of Dr. Markowitz. I will devote my remaining time to

discussing the administration’s progress on our proposal for sick

DOE workers.

The Clinton-Gore administration’s commitment to the veterans of

the Cold War does not end with workers at Paducah or with workers exposed to beryllium. Last year, Secretary Richardson, along

with several members of Congress, announced that the administration would propose legislation to provide compensation, both costs

of medical care and the portion of lost wages, for the victims of beryllium disease. The Chairman is one of the original sponsors of

this legislation.

Because we already established that Paducah workers had been

exposed to radioactive materials without their full knowledge or

without adequate protection, we include a provision to provide certain Paducah workers with specified radiation-related cancers a

$100,000 lump-sum payment. This legislation was historic in that

it was the first recognition by the Federal Government that workers made ill from exposures in the nuclear weapons complex should

be compensated for their illnesses.

At the same time, President Clinton directed the National Economic Council to lead a review to determine whether there are

other workers that should be included in the program. To support

that effort, the administration has undertaken a number of activities.

30

1The prepared statement of Dr. Markowitz appears in the Appendix on page 93.

First, the NEC assembled a panel of health experts to look at the

scientific evidence to determine if there are occupational illnesses

among current or former DOE contract workers.

Second, they looked at current State Workers’ Compensation programs to see how they are working for DOE workers with occupational illness.

We have also held public meetings at major DOE sites to hear

directly the experiences of current and former workers. So far, we

have held meetings in Paducah, Piketon, Oak Ridge, Rocky Flats,

Hanford, Las Vegas, and Los Alamos. More than 2,800 current and

former workers and their family members attended these meetings

and more than 370 shared their stories with us, and let me say,

Mr. Chairman and Senator Voinovich, they were very similar to

the stories we heard today.

We heard from people who are proud of their work to protect national security but feel disappointed that this work may have made

them sick and the government has done little or nothing to help

them. Most told us they would not file for Workers’ Compensation.

They were told not to bother to apply because claims were routinely denied. The few who did apply rarely won their claims and

many cases lasted years. Those who were able to win their claims

did not receive benefits that would cover their cost for medical

treatment or lost wages.

Based on the results of these studies and the outcomes of public

meetings, we expect the National Economic Council will make a

recommendation to the President by March 31 of this year.

I would like to mention and thank the Senators for their help so

far in moving this initiative forward. We would love to encourage

your help. Our bill has been referred to the Labor Committee and

we know they are planning to hold field hearings in Ohio, which

we greatly look forward to. We would love also for there to be a

focus for this legislation in Washington so we could begin to address some of the issues that were raised earlier today.

Mr. Chairman, that concludes my statement. I would be pleased

to answer any questions from the Committee.

Chairman THOMPSON. Thank you very much. Dr. Markowitz.

TESTIMONY OF STEVEN B. MARKOWITZ,1 M.D., PROFESSOR

AND DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR THE BIOLOGY OF NATURAL

SYSTEMS, QUEENS COLLEGE, CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW

YORK, FLUSHING, NEW YORK

Dr. MARKOWITZ. Good afternoon. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and

Senator Voinovich, for inviting me here to speak today. I am an occupational medicine physician, which means that I specialize in the

dilemma that Senator Thompson mentioned before, relating exposure to disease, hopefully, ultimately with the idea of preventing

disease, because once we can identify the exposure, we ought to be

able to prevent illness from occurring.

I direct an innovative medical and educational program called

the Worker Health Protection Program at the Portsmouth, Oak

Ridge K–25, and Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plants, and I want to

speak to you today about that program. My written testimony is

31

longer. I provide more detail. But I will highlight my comments

today.

This program was established under Section 3162, the National

Defense Reauthorization Act of 1993. It was established by Congress with a simple idea. That is, that workers at DOE facilities,

former workers who had significant exposures and were at risk for

occupational diseases ought to have made available to them medical screenings that could detect those diseases early, at a point at

which medical intervention could be helpful, and it is under that

program that DOE established the Worker Health Protection Program.

We went through a merit-based competitive review process in

order to get the contract from the Department of Energy. This program is sponsored by PACE International Union in conjunction

with Queens College, City University of New York, which is where

I am from. You may wonder why an occupational medicine physician from New York is required to do this work in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, or Portsmouth, Ohio, or Paducah, Kentucky, but some of

the comments you have heard from the earlier panel may shed

light on that, and that is the union which initiated the program

wanted an independent, objective physician with expertise in occupational medicine who was not contaminated by their experience in

those communities, not absorbed by the contractors or other employers in the community, and could be trusted to provide an independent, candid, expert opinion, and that is why I am involved

with the program.

This is not a research activity. This is a clinical service program

meant to be of help to people. In addition to the medical screenings

which we provide, which includes breathing tests, chest x-ray, a

complete occupational history, medical history, physical examination, blood tests, including tests for beryllium, and urine tests, we

also have a 2-hour educational workshop, which I regard as key to

our program. It is run by current and former workers, two of whom

are here today, Sam Ray, who spoke before, and Ben Taylor in Oak

Ridge, and these workers are running the special 2-hour workshops

for former workers in order to help people understand what they

were exposed to and what medical screening can do for them.

Let me give you some of the preliminary results of our worker

health protection program. We have screened 1,000 people to date.

I would say our most outstanding result really is the response that

we have gotten from former workers to our program. We had a

simple press conference at the start of the program last spring in

each of the three communities, and since that time, we have done

absolutely no outreach except that done by word of mouth by current and former workers. We have done no advertising for the program. We have received 2,000 phone calls to our national toll-free

number from former workers who want to be screened, want to

participate in our program.

We have screened 1,000 people to date, all of whom—these are

former workers—are volunteers for the program. They have called

us because they want to participate. They want to find out the answer to their question, their central question, which is did my exposures that I had at that plant, was it deleterious to my health and

what can I do about that now? And obviously, this is an important

32

question, not only to the people in this room but the great numbers

of former, and I would say current workers, certainly at the gaseous diffusion plants. Providing the answer to that, at least a partial answer to that question, is what our program is about.

Of the 1,000 workers we have screened so far, about 10 percent

have asbestos-related scarring in the chest. That is a non-malignant scarring of the chest due to asbestos. About 20 to 25 percent

of workers have chronic bronchitis and/or emphysema, to which I

believe their exposures to hydrofluoric acid and other irritants in

the gaseous diffusion process contributed to their disease. There is

near universal hearing loss, which is in part due to aging and in

part due to the fact that the gaseous diffusion plants are very noisy

places. Everybody recognizes that.

We found 8 workers out of 245 from K–25, 8 workers, about 3

percent, who have had confirmed positive beryllium sensitivity.

This is a higher figure than we expected to find.

We have seen minimal rates of kidney or liver disease, which we

were worried about because of heavy solvent exposure, and most of

the cases we have seen, I believe are probably related to other medical conditions, such as hypertension or diabetes.

In addition, we have educated almost 800 people through 55

workshops, 55 separate workshops led by Mr. Ray, by Ben Taylor

from Oak Ridge, and our other coordinators on the ground, educating people about their exposures and their concerns.

Now, I want to emphasize that ours is not a comprehensive

screening program. We do not cover all medical conditions. We are

looking at chronic lung disease. We are looking at bladder cancer

at K–25. We are looking at kidney and liver disease and hearing

loss. Under the mandate of Section 3162, we could not look comprehensively at all medical conditions that might be work-related.

In addition, I would say that a lot of the medical conditions that

people have are complicated and really not amenable to screening.

What many people need is careful and thorough diagnosis and

treatment centers by physicians who are expert in occupational

medicine and who are independent enough to be able to give an expert, honest opinion.

Let me say one other caveat about our program, which is that

we have seen 1,000 people. That is a lot. There are at least 15,000

or more former workers eligible for our program. The people we

have seen are self-selected. They have come to us as volunteers.

The numbers I have given you on rates of disease may or may not

be representative of the larger population, and we will know more

over time.

Let me talk about the future of the program, which is going to

change, actually, within a week or two. In August 1999, when the

issue of plutonium and the transuranics at Paducah came to light,

or at least became public, the Assistant Secretary, Dr. Michaels,

called our program and asked us whether we could expand our

medical screening program, sooner rather than later, to include

current workers, to test former workers at a greater rate, and to

do in general a faster, more expanded program. And we said, yes,

we could do that, and we submitted a proposal to him within a couple of weeks.

33

I am happy to announce that our program has been expanded by the Department of Energy. We requested close to $6 million. They

have located $3.5 million at present and the additional money, I

understand, is in a supplemental request to Congress.

There are three changes we will make in the program. One is,

we will begin to screen current workers. I do not believe current

workers at the gaseous diffusion plants are getting the kind of cancer and other screenings that they need and that those conditions

are not being properly related to their exposures. So we will offer

our program to current workers.

Second, we are only funded to date to screen 1,200 former workers per year. At that rate, it will take us at least a dozen years

to screen all former workers once. So we are going to expand the

rate at which we are screening former workers up to 3,000 per year

at the three sites, which is a marked expansion of our program.

With full funding, we will be able to screen close to 6,000 workers per year, completing the screening of current workers within 2

years and former workers within a number of years after that because there are so many former workers.

And last, let me say that we are going to add an innovative

screening technique, lung cancer screening. Lung cancer is an important problem among gaseous diffusion plant workers. Let me explain why. Gaseous diffusion plant workers work with uranium,

and uranium is a lung carcinogen. They work with beryllium, and

beryllium is a lung carcinogen. They work with plutonium and neptunium, we find out now, and those agents are plausibly linked to

lung cancer. Many of them also smoke cigarettes, and their occupational exposures multiply the risk of the cigarette smoking to

produce an excess risk of lung cancer.

Previously, we were not able to screen for lung cancer. Right

now, at present, about 160,000 people die per year of lung cancer

in the United States. Most of them present late in their disease

with symptoms. They come in coughing up blood. They come in

with chest pain. They come in with shortness of breath. Their disease is diagnosed at too late a stage to do anything about it.

We can now change this. Last July, there was published in Lancet, a major medical journal, a study from New York, Cornell University, showing that use of the CT scan for lung cancer can detect

malignant nodules at an early stage when they can be resected. In

that study, they screened 1,000 people. One out of 35 had lung cancer, and almost all of the people they found with lung cancer had

Stage I disease, had small nodules that could be resected. Those

people, most of them will lead normal lives.

I say we should do this, and I proposed this idea to Dr. Michaels

and DOE has accepted it. Who else in the country should get this

screening test first but the gaseous diffusion plant workers and

others within the DOE complex because of their long history of exposure to lung carcinogens. Normally, this kind of medical innovation comes to the metropolitan areas first. In New York, if you

walk in Manhattan from East 19th Street, Beth Israel Hospital, up

to 168th Street at Columbia Presbyterian, you will encounter no

less than five medical centers that will give you this CT scan for

early detection of lung cancer. That is to say, if you have about

$1,000 in your pocket to spend.

34

You cannot get this right now in Paducah or Portsmouth or Oak

Ridge, Tennessee. The radiologists are much less aware of it. The

machinery may or may not exist. So we propose that it ought to

go to Paducah and Portsmouth and Oak Ridge, not waiting 5 or 10

years at the normal rate of diffusion of medical advances, but it

ought to go directly from the study published less than a year ago

to the facilities and to the people who need it most.

So now DOE has provided us with funding to lease the CT scanner. We will put it on a 40-foot mobile unit and we will drive it

between Portsmouth, Oak Ridge, and Paducah. We will provide CT

screenings for early detection for lung cancer for as many former

and current workers as we can. So that is the new part of our program, which we regard as very exciting. It is very exciting, because

I think with this technique, we are going to be able to actually save

some lives. We are going to be able to detect lung cancer early,

have it resected, and help people lead normal lives.

That is a summary of the Worker Health Protection Program. It

is a partial response to, as you said, Senator Thompson, the unseemly legacy of DOE in the past and, hopefully, the beginning of

a different kind of legacy for the future. Thank you.

Chairman THOMPSON. Well, thank you very much.

It is kind of hard to get your arms around all this. There are so

many studies involved and people and departments and all that,

but let me see if I can break it down as to where we are, and I

want to thank both of you gentlemen for what you are doing.

Dr. Michaels, you work for an outfit that does not exactly have

an illustrious track record in this regard, but you have not been

there very long, so my comments are not going to be personal to

you. I think you are trying to move in the right direction, not

enough and not fast enough, but in the right direction. Of course,

it might help if we helped you with some of the monetary parts of

that and budgetary parts and we intend to do that. But you have

worked with us and we appreciate that.

We are going to get a report on Oak Ridge in August. We have

already got a report on Paducah. You are well into the situation

there in Portsmouth. Apparently, you are finding some of the same

things in Portsmouth you found in Paducah, and I would assume

that you are going to find some of the same things in Oak Ridge

that you found in the other two. So we will have that in August.

We still are awaiting this report from Drs. Byrd and Lockley. It is

supposed to be due April 30 of this year. You mentioned the National Economic Council report that is due March 31 of this year.

So we have all these reports coming out that are probably going

to say pretty much the same thing, my guess, and that is there is

an awful lot of smoke there and it looks kind of bad, but there is

no conclusive proof as to anything. I want to talk about that for a

minute, because I think we have to start looking at this situation

maybe differently than we have in times past.

While the National Economic Council report, Dr. Michaels, is not

due out until March 31, we just happen to have gotten hold of a

draft of that, which may or may not turn out to be the one that

you come up with in March, but let us assume for the moment that

maybe it is going to be pretty much in keeping with this draft, and

the draft says there is evidence from health studies of DOE workVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:58 Aug 02, 2000 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00042 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 64250.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: SAFFAIRS
35

ers that suggest that some current and former contractor workers

at DOE nuclear weapons production facilities may be at increased

risk of illnesses from occupational exposure to ionized radiation

and other chemical and physical hazards associated with the production of nuclear weapons. For certain facilities and for certain

subgroups of workers within these facilities, some evidence suggests a strong association between employment and adverse health

outcomes. Some studies incillate an increased risk of adverse

health outcomes with increased levels of exposure to ionized radiation.

Dr. Markowitz, that does not come as any surprise to you, I do

not assume, if that turns out to be the report.

Dr. MARKOWITZ. No.

Chairman THOMPSON. That is consistent with what you are running across, I would assume.

Dr. MARKOWITZ. It is consistent from what is known in the published literature, sure.

Chairman THOMPSON. We both alluded to the problem that we

have here, because we are getting a whole lot of reports and a lot

of activity, but as they say, that does not necessarily feed the bulldog. Let us talk about what we are going to do about all this.

Now, obviously, you have got to get your data together to the extent that you can. It is amazing that the government has taken

this long to really do these surveys, because as you point out, they

are very complex. There are a lot of different factors. Statistics say

different things that do not seem to make sense sometimes.

I noticed here in one of the findings from one of the DOE studies

that, overall, DOE production workers had significantly lower ageadjusted death rates compared to the U.S. general population for

all causes of death combined, and there were only two exceptions.

So that jumps out to you until you stop to consider you are talking

about the population in general and people who work at anything

probably are healthier than people who are not working. So, statistics can lead you in all kind of different directions, but there is one

common theme and that is these workers are clearly having problems that other people do not have in these numbers and they

clearly were exposed to things that, we will say, more likely than

not have to do with those illnesses.

My problem is that we get all these reports and we wait on all

these things and so forth, but we are never going to come to any

conclusions and we are going to have to face up to that, and the

reason for that is the inherent difficulty and causation, but also the

faulty records that have been kept in times past, the fact that the

government had an obligation to keep up with exposure and they

did not. They in some cases, and some of the things that you have

run across, there in Paducah, you had a doctor there that was on

the government payroll who said, this is a bad public relations

problem so we had better not handle this, I mean, the most terrible

things.

And then you point out the fact that these folks for all these

years are going to—when I grew up, a doctor is a doctor. They are

all the same. But this is a highly specialized area and not a lot of

people know what they are dealing with, plus, a lot of times—no

reflection on any particular doctor—but the fact is they are workVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:58 Aug 02, 2000 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00043 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 64250.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: SAFFAIRS
36

ing for the government in some cases, and we have seen what that

leads to.

So we are going to have to ultimately say, well, what are we

going to do about all this? I do not see any resolution where you

are going to say with certainty or beyond a reasonable doubt or beyond a preponderance of the evidence that you can prove in a court

of law that there is a cause and effect relationship, and that bothers me.

So the question is, and Dr. Michaels, you are going to come up

with something here, a recommendation supposedly in March, but

the question is, what kind of system are we going to come up with

that is fair in order to do justice, in order to more likely do justice?

And I will tell you something, if there is a question of being a little

unfair to the government or being a little unfair to these people,

guess which side we are going to come down on that in view of the

history of this thing?

And I will tell you, Dr. Michaels, if you come up with a proposal

that has a lot of legalisms, and I imagine you are over there looking at these numbers now, 55,000 workers or something like that

and multiplying that by X-number of dollars and all that is going

through your mind, but if you come up with something that puts

the burden on these folks that they cannot meet, if you come up

with something that does not have the correct presumptions and

does not incorporate into it the history of this and the responsibility the government has, it is going to be rejected and we are

going to go to the floor of Congress and broaden the discussion and

the administration is going to wind up being embarrassed for being

so niggardly with its proposal, and I do not think it wants to be

that.

I think Bill Richardson is trying to move forward. I am not sure

he realizes yet the extent of the problem and the extent of the determination that we broaden this sufficiently and that we have

some kind of a system that does not require these people to prove

things that the government itself in many cases has made it so

that they cannot prove.

And Dr. Markowitz, you probably have a lot of thoughts going

through your mind about the things I have said, so I would like

to hear from you.

Dr. MARKOWITZ. Let me address some of your earlier comments.

I mean, there are a lot of complexities, but some of the problems

can be broken down. We have seen about 1,000 people, and about

800 people—I have gone through their records and I have written

them letters, individual letters giving them the results of their examination and telling them whether their conditions are work-related or not, at least for the conditions we are looking at.

In fact, for the things that we are looking at it is not very complicated at all. If a fellow was a maintenance mechanic at Portsmouth for 20 year and he has scarring in his lungs which is typical

of asbestos exposure, then he likely has asbestosis due, at least in

part, to that exposure he got at that plant. I do not have to prove

beyond a reasonable doubt. I mean, it is not a murder charge here.

I just have to prove that there was likely to be a contribution from

that exposure, and that is sufficient. That is the standard in occupational medicine.

37

For a fellow who worked at Oak Ridge who worked with

hydrofluoric acid, which is used industrially to etch glass, and that

person now has emphysema, and they smoked cigarettes, likely, I

say that hydrofluoric acid contributed to their emphysema. I think

I am right about that.

Chairman THOMPSON. When you say, likely to have contributed

or contributed and so forth, is that sufficient? Do you think that

is sufficient in most State Workers’ Compensation cases to get the

checks?

Dr. MARKOWITZ. That is the standard.

Chairman THOMPSON. The medical standard might be one thing

and the legal standard might be another, and that is the problem

that we are encountering a lot of times.

Dr. MARKOWITZ. I am not an expert throughout the country in

Workers’ Compensation standards, but I can tell you that what I

have come across in the States that I have looked at so far is that

if there is a contribution from the exposure to the disease, that is

sufficient. There are other problems with compensation. I do not

think that conceptual problem is the main problem right now.

The problem that Mr. Ray was talking about, chondrosarcoma, a

special type of bone cancer, you go to the cancer epidemiology text,

the main one, called Cancer Epidemiology, and you look under bone

cancer, the first sentence under ionizing radiation is that chondrosarcoma and the other types of bone cancer are caused by ionizing

radiation. So that is not rocket science to make that kind of statement about causation. There is a lot of information available that

supports a lot of the claims that people are making.

Now, there are other areas that are far grayer. People who have

multiple system problems, who have neurologic disease, who have

immunologic problems, those are not amenable to screening. Those

are tougher to figure out. And my view is that those people need

special diagnostic and treatment centers set up in the communities

operated by independent expert physicians and others with the full

participation of the patients and of people in the community who

are involved who will deliver that honest opinion.

In 1987, we at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine did a study

of occupational disease in New York State, and we said how much

we thought it cost. And after that, the State legislature set up a

system of clinics, independent diagnostic and treatment clinics,

eight of them around the State. Every worker and every community resident within an hour could drive to a facility which would

give them a fair, objective expert opinion about whether their disease was work related or caused by some environmental factors. I

do not see why that should not exist in the communities that you

are concerned about.

Chairman THOMPSON. I think your information and your technology is probably just ahead of where we are realistically and we

need to catch up to what you are talking about. There is no question but there are some cases where exposure is clear, that the

cause and effect may be clear with regard to certain diseases. I am

not talking about those cases necessarily, although I am wondering

from Dr. Michaels, I am going to ask him a little bit later whether

or not the compensation system they are going to set up are going

to incorporate the standards that Dr. Markowitz mentioned, and

38

that is a contributory matter rather than—or likely to have contributed, some of that nature, those very important words.

What I am concerned about are those vaguer situations where

there is not a clear cause and effect, and part of the reason for that

is because the exposure data is insufficient, and the reason for that

is the government did not keep it.

Mr.—I started to call you Dr. Voinovich—we have got so many

doctors, Senator. [Laughter.]

Senator VOINOVICH. First of all, I would like to say that I have

been very impressed with the cooperation and the conscientiousness of Dr. Michaels. Dr. Markowitz, I am not familiar with all the

work that you are doing, but you get good marks from Dr. Michaels, and obviously from your testimony you really care about

what you are doing and the people that have been affected by this

longstanding situation that we have had in the country.

In S. 1954, the administration proposal, does the administration

intend to consider compensation for respiratory ailments or is cancer the only covered ailment?

Dr. MICHAELS. Would you like me to speak to actually that bill

or to the——

Senator VOINOVICH. What I am interested in is that when we get

legislation, let us make sure we cover everything, and you have

chemical exposure, for example, fluoride, hydrofluoric acid,

trichlorethylene, ethylene, and some of these other chemicals that

people have been exposed to. It seems to me that when we are

doing this, we ought to cover everything that people have been subjected to and not just restrict it to say if it is not cancer, it is not

covered.

Dr. MICHAELS. No, I agree, and Secretary Richardson has been

very clear. He wants to cover everybody across the DOE complex.

If they have a disease, any disease caused by radiation or toxic

chemical exposure, they should be compensated. And certainly that

is the direction that Secretary Richardson is pushing very hard to

do.

Senator VOINOVICH. So it is going to be a broad-based bill that

we are not going to end up saying to somebody, I am sorry but we

left you out?

Dr. MICHAELS. I obviously cannot predict exactly what will be in

the bill because we are not at the end of the process, but I can tell

you certainly what Secretary Richardson and I are committed to

trying to get. He certainly said he wants to cover everybody.

Senator VOINOVICH. The other thing is that in preparing for this

hearing, my staff has learned of documents that you have in your

possession, and I have written to you on them regarding the oxide

conversion plant at Portsmouth. The oxide conversion plant, from

what I understand, is a plant that recycles spent fuel from nuclear

reactors. Is that information going to be coming——

Dr. MICHAELS. Yes. We will release it promptly. We have a number of documents. Some are in my possession. I am told there are

additional ones that I will be receiving. Our commitment is to release all documents publicly either at the time of the release of our

report in May or before that, depending on—and we will put them

on our website and we will give them to you and to the press. No

documents will be withheld unless there is some security matter

39

that requires that, and we will do everything we can to release

those, as well.

Senator VOINOVICH. Dr. Michaels and Dr. Markowitz, you have

an historic opportunity because of the fact that you are new on

board, because of your medical background, because of your experience, to help draft some legislation that will really make a difference in the lives of people in this country that have been affected by all these facilities that we have had. I would really be interested in—following up on your testimony, Dr. Markowitz—of the

things that we can do from a diagnostic point of view, I mean, if

you had the ideal world, what would you be doing?

Now, you have talked about bringing in the equipment. I know,

for example, I have a good friend of mine that is in pretty bad

shape from lung cancer, and if he had been diagnosed earlier, I

think he was, what is it, stages 1, 2, 3, 4, I think he was at stage

3, and if you get somebody at stage 1, you have a good chance of

making sure that the cancer is taken care of.

So the point I am making is that from the point of view of an

aggressive action plan by the Department of things that you can

do and pay for that would go out and try to identify as early as

possible the problems that people have, I would like to know what

that ideal plan would be, and then what part of your budget that

would be paid for, because Mr. Chairman, we have got to know—

we can talk all we want to, but it is a question of coming up with

the money to pay for some of these things.

This would be something the Department could do. So now you

have got people, you have screened them, you have got a diagnosis.

The next issue is, how do you provide compensation for individuals,

and there are a variety of—I do not know what insurance coverage

these folks have or do not have, but to look at what the average

situation is and what is it that in a piece of legislation we could

include that would guarantee that once, for example, you diagnose

somebody at lung cancer 1, that they have the insurance coverage

that they can go in and have somebody take care of it and not have

the problem of, I have got it, but how do I take care of it? So that

would be the second tier. That would have to be in the legislation.

And then I do not know how you compensate for somebody that

has passed away. I mean, I do not know how you can do that, but

I think there are some people that can think about that issue.

The point I am making is that we have got this chance to really

make a difference right now and I think that I would like for you

to come back to this Committee with your best recommendations.

I know you are going to be making it to your agency, but we are

interested in being helpful. Maybe we can collaborate. But I do not

want a minimum thing. I would like to say, this is what we really

think would get the job done, and then let us see if we cannot get

that taken care of.

In addition, the issue of some of these things that—I would like

your opinion, are there some things that you have seen out there

that you do not know what it is and where we need some specific

research work? Would you want to comment on that?

Dr. MARKOWITZ. Not really yet. We are just getting our data together to begin to figure some of that out. Ours is funded as a 5-

year pilot program by DOE. We are starting our fourth year. By

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the end of 5 years, we will have screened a lot of people, but by

no means exhausted all the people who deserve screening. And so

hopefully the program will be continued beyond that.

I would make a strong plea in favor of presumption. When I look

at these people’s records, their occupational exposure history, I look

at their job title, I know what they are exposed to. We have a 1-

page checklist for each job. I look at their diagnosis that we make,

and for a large proportion of the times, it is an easy association to

make, because I know if a person was, again, a maintenance mechanic or a process operator and they have given lung conditions,

their exposures likely contributed to that. That is not that difficult.

I recognize that the exposure information going back historically

in DOE facilities is in adequacy. I would say in the private sector

it is probably no better, having worked with patients at other facilities, like DuPont, Goodyear, etc. There is no difference, I think, historically, between the private sector and DOE except that DOE

should have been better, I think, because of accountability and it

served the public purpose.

But in any event, those exposure data do not exist and I think

we cannot really hope that they will exist or be able to make judgments hoping that there are quantitative data we can rely on. If

a person reports exposure, had a job title that we believe exposure

was plausible, has a plausible condition, then to me, that is sufficient, and that is where judgment of occupational medicine comes

in. I do not understand why legislation cannot reflect that.

Senator VOINOVICH. Good. The other thing, of course, is the

stress level. I mean, one of the things that I think that the Department should be looking at right now, we have a lot of people in this

room and a lot that are not here are worrying what is going to happen to USEC. Are they going to stay in business, and if they go

out of business, then who is going to take care of the insurance for

the current workers?

This is a big deal. I think everyone agrees that, in fact, the answer to the question I asked was, do we need to have a uranium

enrichment facility, and the answer to that was, yes, we do. So if

they do not do it, then somebody has got to do it, and I think the

issue of the health coverage of the current workers and then those

that have been exposed in the past and what kind of health coverage they are going to have is a big issue.

You cannot put a dollar figure on stress, but in this country, one

of the biggest problems people have is whether or not they have insurance or not to cover their health problems. So I think the Department ought to be looking at that issue in terms of down the

road decision making about that facility.

When do you think that we will have enough information to put

something together?

Dr. MICHAELS. A legislative package?

Senator VOINOVICH. Yes.

Dr. MICHAELS. I am hoping that there will be a proposal within

the next month or so. Obviously, Congress can go and do this on

their own. We would like to work very closely with Congress and

the Members here, especially, in putting this together.

Chairman THOMPSON. You will.

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Senator VOINOVICH. I have faith, Mr. Chairman, that we are

going to get some good information from these guys, and I really

mean that. I think that we ought to do it with the idea that it is

going to be something that is not going to only take care of the current situation but something that we can rely upon in the future.

Would it not be wonderful to be able to say that we have had all

these people that have worked at these facilities, and God knows

what is still out there that we do not even know about, and that

if it does arise, that we have a plan in place that can respond to

the needs of these people. We are looking forward to working with

you.

Dr. MICHAELS. Thank you.

Dr. MARKOWITZ. Thank you.

Chairman THOMPSON. Just a couple more things. First of all, Dr.

Markowitz, you really are doing the Lord’s work and both of you

are in trying this early detection. I do not mean to minimize that

at all. It is part of the same problem, but it is a different kind of

problem from the compensation part. It is extremely important that

we fund that and that we do it at a faster rate. You are going as

fast as you can with the money you have, but we need to do that

at a faster pace.

The other part of that is, though, the more immediate part is all

those people who need immediate help, who we know that have

major problems. We do not have to worry about trying to find out

if they have problems. We know that they do.

So I get back again to the standard that we are going to apply,

and I think, Dr. Michaels, I would pay close attention to what Dr.

Markowitz said, and what he said is that there are a lot of cases

out there that are pretty easy to determine a causal relationship.

That is going to come as kind of a surprise to a lot of people who

are going to be saying, in a sense, if it was that easy, why have

I not gotten a little bit more response or compensation for it, if you

are one of those things that fall into the easy category?

I think whatever legislation that you propose needs to take that

into consideration. He talks in terms of contributes to the problem

and all that. His words are easy to slough over, but if you slugged

it out in a courtroom for 15, 20 years, you understand, those are

very important words and your people, lawyers over there, all know

that. So I encourage you, do not set the standards so high that it

is going to be too difficult. Look at some of these other standards,

Agent Orange, Black Lung, all these other things. I think if you

look back over there, you did not set the standard so high there.

Of course, maybe the numbers were not as big, either, but it really

should not matter.

I think the language that Dr. Markowitz uses there is good language, but a Workers’ Compensation case or something like that

requires usually a higher standard of proof and that is not what

we should be dealing with here.

Especially from what I hear about what you are going to come

out with with radiation exposure, for example, I am concerned

about it, because as I understand it, compensation decisions would

be based on a number of factors, including dose information. I am

not asking you to comment on your report that has not come out

yet officially, but if that is the case, again, we know that dose inforVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:58 Aug 02, 2000 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00049 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 64250.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: SAFFAIRS
42

mation, we have a problem with that. So I would urge you not to

rely too much on something like that as you come forward with

your proposal.

What about this business of medical records that have been redacted? We are going to have to get around that problem. I would

ask you, and I am going to be talking to Secretary Richardson

about that and these other things, but that is just lying out there.

That will not work. We have got to do something about that.

Now, we can set up a system. We can get some disinterested

third parties or go to a court in camera or whatever we need to do

to get around that, but we cannot have these people out here not

knowing what they have been exposed to if, in fact, there are cases

where—these look like cases where you know what they have been

exposed to, we just cannot tell you, and that is not going to work.

Be thinking about that, because we are going to be talking to you

about that.

Dr. Michaels, it has been reported in the press that 417,800 tons

of recycled uranium, that is, uranium that had already been used

to produce plutonium for weapons and was therefore contaminated

with plutonium, neptunium, and other radioactive materials, were

sent to the K–25 plant during the 1950’s, 1960’s, and 1970’s. In

your testimony, you say that Y–12 received some recycled uranium,

as well. That is certainly not as much as Paducah received, but it

is, I believe, about three times more than DOE originally estimated

when the Paducah story first broke. Can you tell us what you know

right now about this recycled uranium that went to Oak Ridge?

Dr. MICHAELS. I do not know much more than what I put in my

testimony. We have a team of people from my office leading what

we call the mass flow project to actually try to trace through invoices and other records all the materials that could have come

from either Hanford or Savannah River, where plutonium was extracted from uranium in the first go-around, so we hope to be presenting that later on in the spring.

We understand the initial estimates were not necessarily accurate. We tried to put them out in that context. We felt at the time

of the Paducah, the first open discussion of this, it was important

to put out what we knew, even if we knew it would not be totally

accurate, rather than have to wait a year. But we are now going

through literally thousands of records to try to determine exactly

how much went to different locations.

At the same time, in terms of the three gaseous diffusion plants,

we have a team of people associated with the University of Utah

working jointly with us and the University of Utah to determine

what exposures occurred, both to uranium and to plutonium, neptunium, and some of the fission products, because just knowing

that the contaminated uranium went there is not enough. We obviously want to know how much exposure occurred and we are working very hard on that, as well, and we hope to be getting——

Chairman THOMPSON. So we can expect a report on that about

when?

Dr. MICHAELS. You will be getting lots of reports, sir. I cannot

tell you when the——

Chairman THOMPSON. Well, one that will tell us how much of

this stuff went to Oak Ridge. That is the one I am asking about.

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Dr. MICHAELS. The Oak Ridge one, with the exception of the Y–

12 part, we hope to have our final reports by June. Y–12 will take

a little bit longer, but the K–25 site will be done by June.

Chairman THOMPSON. All right. And then Y–12 shortly after

that?

Dr. MICHAELS. Shortly after that.

Chairman THOMPSON. One more question. The GAO report back

as far as 1980 concluded that the Oak Ridge operations office did

not conduct adequate oversight of health and safety operations at

the plant, did not conduct the required number of inspections and

appraisals, did not provide an adequate forum for workers’ complaints, relied too heavily on contractors to resolve these issues

that arose. Of course, it was often in the best interest of the contractor not to resolve them. This goes back to 1980.

When that report was written, the local field offices were responsible for overseeing the safety and health programs of the facilities

under their purview. I believe this responsibility has been moved

to DOE headquarters under your supervision, now is that correct?

Dr. MICHAELS. Not really. The field offices have responsibility for

overseeing health and safety on a day-to-day basis. My office, and

I have a Deputy Assistant Secretary for Oversight, David Statler,

who is here, is responsible for general oversight in the complex,

and we go and we do periodic inspections to see how the local oversight is going on.

But oversight, there are many of us in DOE who have the title

‘‘oversight.’’ Because of the nature of the risks involved, safety and

health oversight is done locally and should be done by very highly

qualified and powerful staff.

Chairman THOMPSON. What can you say to assure us that it is

being done any better than it was in 1980?

Dr. MICHAELS. We have beefed up our oversight investigation,

which we oversee the local oversight people, and I think we are

doing a much better job issuing pretty hard-hitting reports, and the

Paducah report was one that, I think, got a lot of attention. We do

not pull any punches. We go and we look and when we see a problem, we call it to the public’s attention as well as to our own attention.

Secretary Richardson recently appointed a new field manager for

Oak Ridge, Leah Dever, who is very committed to environmental

safety and health. In fact, when she began at DOE, she began in

the environment, health, and safety unit, working for the office

that I currently head. I think her commitment to these issues is

unequalled, is unsurpassed in the complex and I think she is doing

everything she can, as well, to increase our daily oversight.

On the other hand, we still have—our problems still occur and

we have some very difficult procedures and processes to work with,

some very, very toxic and hazardous chemicals. We had an explosion in December at Y–12 that was—we identified significant problems associated with that and we have to just keep pushing as best

we can.

Chairman THOMPSON. I think that is the problem we are trying

to reinforce. You have some very toxic and hazardous materials

that you are dealing with there.

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Dr. MICHAELS. I know. I do not minimize any of those problems,

sir.

Chairman THOMPSON. And I know that you do not. Thank you

very much.

Senator Voinovich, do you have any more questions?

Senator VOINOVICH. I just have one question more, Mr. Chairman. In your screening, Dr. Markowitz, thus far, we had testimony

by an Anita George in Piketon about the reproductive problems

that women were having, miscarriages and—I think she said just

about everybody at the place has had a hysterectomy. Through

your screening, have you surmised anything about the accuracy of

that or whether there is a much higher incidence of, let us say,

hysterectomies? If everybody at the place has had a hysterectomy,

somebody has got some real worries about what they have been exposed to.

Dr. MARKOWITZ. Right. Well, we have not asked that specific

question. We do collect general medical histories on people. We

have only screened about 350 people at Portsmouth, and a small

percentage of those would be women, so we really would not have

enough data to address that. But over time, we would be able to

collect that kind of information.

Senator VOINOVICH. I would really be interested in that, because

that to me was shocking, that women who had worked there had

miscarriages and obviously somebody advised them to have

hysterectomies, and I would like to verify that if it is true.

Dr. MARKOWITZ. OK. As we develop that information, I will get

it to you.

Senator VOINOVICH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman THOMPSON. Dr. Markowitz, and this will be final, but

you just mentioned something that reminded me of something else

that concerned me, and that is it seemed like your studies in large

part are studies of other studies that have already been done. You

know what my concern is there, that a lot of these studies that

have been done historically are lacking and inadequate and incomplete. It points out what a massive job it is. I mean, if you went

out and started a new nationwide survey, how long would that

take? But it does point out a difficulty, does it not, the fact that

you are having to rely in many cases on your surveys on data that

may be flawed in some respects?

Dr. MARKOWITZ. At the start of our project, we had a year needs

assessment and I looked at all the studies that were published,

specifically at K–25, Portsmouth, and Paducah. No one had ever

done any work at Paducah. There was some limited work by

NIOSH at Portsmouth and some more extensive work at K–25. We

read those and critiqued them and took the information of value

from them, in particular with a grain of salt. We could recognize

the weaknesses, particularly in the exposure measurements, problems with outcome measurements, the problem as you mentioned

before, Senator Thompson, about the healthy worker effect, the fact

that people who work start out healthier and often, in some respects, stay healthier, at least the large proportion, than people

who do not work, so you always see this depression in the overall

risk of death for all causes.

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But our work really is—first of all, we are not really doing a

study. Our work will yield information, but ours is a service to people. We are medically screening and educating people about their

risks, identifying health problems. This is not an epidemiologic

study. Over time, we will have enough information, I think, to

make some statements. But this is intended to be a service to people.

Within the budget we have, within the mandate we have, we try

to cast it as broadly as we can to capture multiple outcomes and

exposures, but we really cannot do it all, given the limitations. We

do not wholly rely on the studies that have been published in the

past. We make our own judgments because we know what

hydrofluoric acid does. We know what trichlorethylene does. We

know what asbestos does. If it did it at insulators working in construction, it will do it at a DOE gaseous diffusion plant. So we use

that kind of information, as well.

Chairman THOMPSON. Do we still have a lot to learn about how

these various chemicals and other elements interact with each

other in the human body?

Dr. MARKOWITZ. Absolutely. Most of what we know about toxic

agents and radiation is really limited to several dozen agents—

lead, mercury, the ones you hear about, trichlorethylene. Most of

the others, we do not know a whole lot about, and mixtures, we

know very little about. We know about asbestos and cigarette

smoking. We know about uranium and cigarette smoking. But mixtures of toxic chemicals have been really very little studied, very

difficult to study, and NIHS, in particular, is interested, but there

has not been a long track record on this in the past.

Chairman THOMPSON. Thank you very much.

Gentlemen, thank you very much. We look forward to working

with you and we thank everyone for being here and being so attentive today. Thank you very much.

The record will remain open for 1 week after the close of this

hearing. We are adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 12:50 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]

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47

A P P E N D I X

PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR MIKE DEWINE, SENATOR FROM THE

STATE OF OHIO

Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member Lieberman, first let me express my appreciation to you for holding this oversight hearing. I believe that it is important to the

people of Piketon, Ohio to know what material the employees of the Portsmouth

Gaseous Diffusion Plant were exposed to, why no one has provided complete and

accurate information on the health and safety risks associated with working in the

Plant, and what progress the Department of Energy is making in providing answers

to the community.

Back in August, I was very troubled to learn that plutonium-laced uranium went

through the Portsmouth facility. Just as troubling, the Department of Energy was

learning about this issue from its own reports. The Department has now had several

months to investigate, and I still have questions. For instance, I am troubled that

the Department has not responded to a February 15th letter from Senator Voinovich, Representative Strickland and myself that asked whether or not the Department’s oversight team would be able to include information on the health and safety

risks from weapons system material, if any was ever sent to Portsmouth, in its final

oversight report. The fact that there are still unanswered questions on the material

that went through the Portsmouth facility may mean that the Department could

downplay the health and safety risks to past and present workers.

While I understand that secrecy was necessary throughout the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s

during the Cold War, I believe that the Department needs to move forward and

make information known that is important to protect worker health and safety.

After all, the health and safety of the workforce should be one of our top priorities.

As I hope to show at a field hearing later this year, the Federal Government permitted workers at the Portsmouth plant and other nuclear facilities to be at risk

of exposure. These men and women who made their contribution to this country’s

national defense have suffered not only from the illnesses that they contracted as

a result of the risk that the government placed them in but also from the systems

set up to compensate these workers for job-related injuries. The Administration has

a proposal to compensate a very limited number of Department of Energy contract

workers whose health was put at risk, and while I support that effort, I believe that

this proposal does not go far enough. It does not include the thousands of Portsmouth employees who were exposed to radioactive and other hazardous materials

without adequate protection, and I am committed to ensuring that Ohio workers are

treated fairly.

Again, I appreciate the Chairman’s interest in an issue that is of great importance

to families of the workers in our states. These families continue to have questions

and they deserve straight answers. I hope this hearing will give us an opportunity

to do just that.

QUESTION FOR THE RECORD SUBMITTED BY SENATOR STEVENS AND

RESPONSE FROM DR. MICHAELS

Question: Mr. Michaels, in the State of Alaska, the United States conducted its

largest atomic underground test to date on the island of Amchitka in 1971. This was

the last of three underground blasts conducted on the island beginning in 1965. It

is my understanding that last year Dr. Seligman made a commitment to a medical

screening program for workers who had been employed at the Amchitka nuclear

weapons site. This screening was to be conducted over a period of years. I would

like to know the current status of that screening process and your plans to complete

it.

Answer: In September 1999, an Agreement in Principle (AIP) between the State

of Alaska and the DOE Nevada Operations Office was executed to support a variety

of environmental monitoring and remediation programs. Included in that AIP was

a commitment to support a program of medical monitoring for former DOE contractor workers who were employed at the Amchitka site. Funding to initiate the

program ($237,000 in FY 00) has been provided to the State of Alaska, and the Department has asked for funds to support full program implementation as part of its

FY 01 budget request.

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