I 
108TH CONGRESS 
2D SESSION 
H. R. 4388 
To amend the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program 
Act of 2000 to include certain nuclear weapons program workers in 
the Special Exposure Cohort under the compensation program established 
by that Act. 
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
MAY 18, 2004 
Mr. UDALL of New Mexico introduced the following bill; which was referred 
to the Committee on the Judiciary, and in addition to the Committee on 
Education and the Workforce, for a period to be subsequently determined 
by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall 
within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned 
A BILL 
To amend the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Com-
pensation Program Act of 2000 to include certain nu-
clear weapons program workers in the Special Exposure 
Cohort under the compensation program established by 
that Act. 
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa-
tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, 
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. 
This Act may be cited as ‘‘Special Exposure Cohort 
Fairness Act of 2004’’.
SEC. 2. FINDINGS. 
Congress finds the following: 
(1) Since World War II, hundreds of thousands 
of men and women have served in building the Na-
tion’s nuclear defense and, in the course of this 
work, have been exposed to beryllium, ionizing radi-
ation, and other hazards unique to nuclear weapons 
production and testing, including tens of thousands 
of workers in New Mexico. The purpose of the En-
ergy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation 
Program Act of 2000 (in this section referred to as 
the ‘‘Act’’), which was enacted on October 30, 2000, 
is to provide for timely, uniform, and adequate com-
pensation of covered employees and, where applica-
ble, survivors of such employees, suffering from ill-
nesses incurred by such employees in the perform-
ance of duty for the Department of Energy and cer-
tain of its contractors and subcontractors. 
(2) Executive Order No. 13179 required the 
Secretary of Health and Human Services to carry 
out the Act’s statutory requirement to issue and im-
plement procedures for conducting radiation dose re-
construction, to establish the scientific basis for 
compensation, and to issue regulations under which 
classes of workers could petition to become members 
of a Special Exposure Cohort and under which such
petitions could be evaluated. Pursuant to the Act, 
workers may petition to be members of a Special 
Exposure Cohort when it is not feasible to estimate 
dose with sufficient accuracy and there is a reason-
able likelihood that exposures to radiation may have 
endangered the health of the class of workers. Spe-
cial Exposure Cohort status provides an automatic 
presumption of causation for 22 radiation-related 
cancers without the need for attempting to estimate 
radiation dose, and is intended to remove an other-
wise insurmountable burden of proof. Such Special 
Exposure Cohorts have been designated by Congress 
at Paducah, Kentucky, Portsmouth, Ohio, the K–25 
facility at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and the Amchitka 
Island Test site in Alaska. 
(3) The National Institute for Occupational 
Safety and Health was tasked with conducting radi-
ation dose reconstructions under the Act. As of April 
16, 2004, the Institute has completed 15 out of 571 
radiation dose reconstructions for covered workers at 
Los Alamos, New Mexico. The Institute has com-
pleted only 18 out of 765 dose reconstructions in 
New Mexico. Sick workers are dying while awaiting 
a determination on their claims, and in many cases 
the delays have caused them to lose hope.
(4) Congressional intent undergirding the statu-
tory requirement to allow additional Special Expo-
sure Cohorts was explained by Senator Jeff Binga-
man, an original cosponsor, as part of the floor de-
bate on the enactment of the Act on October 12, 
2000. He stated that this provision was added ‘‘for 
a significant minority who were exposed to radiation 
but for whom it would be infeasible to reconstruct 
their dose. There are several reasons why . . . this 
infeasibility might exist. First relevant dose records 
might be missing or might not exist altogether. Sec-
ond there might be a way to reconstruct the dose, 
but it would be prohibitively expensive to do so. Fi-
nally it might take so long to reconstruct a dose for 
a group of workers that they will all be dead before 
we have an answer that can be used to determine 
their eligibility.’’. 
(5) Dose reconstruction is being interminably 
delayed for claimants at Los Alamos National Lab-
oratory. A May 5, 2004, report to Congress by the 
Centers for Disease Control regarding obstacles to 
records recovery needed for radiation dose recon-
struction states that: ‘‘Los Alamos National Labora-
tory has not submitted individual bioassay data, nor 
detailed external dosimetry data. The submittals
consist of derived dose quantities, which cannot 
readily be used in dose reconstructions because they 
use a different methodology than NIOSH uses for 
dose reconstructions’’. 
(6) Hearings and investigations reveal that 
there was not appropriate worker monitoring for 
mixed neutron and gamma radiation for certain time 
periods, doubtful reliability of radiation dosimetry 
reports provided to claimants for certain time peri-
ods, and for some claimants, access has been denied 
to particular monitoring records. One of the workers 
who testified at a Department of Energy hearing in 
Espanola, New Mexico, in 2000 described how he 
could fall through the cracks of a system that oper-
ated solely on dose histories. He was a supervisor at 
what was called the ‘‘hot dump’’ at Los Alamos. En-
vironmental restoration reports indicate that more 
than 80 different radionuclides were taken there to 
be disposed of, making it very difficult to 
resconstruct dose amounts for each worker. 
(7) Over the course of the atomic weapons pro-
gram at Los Alamos, health-related documents were 
withheld from the workers and public in order to 
shield the Government and its contractors from pub-
lic criticism, concerns about union demands for haz-
ardous duty pay, and real or perceived liability. 
(8) Memoranda indicate that air concentrations 
of radionuclides at Area G of Los Alamos were sys-
tematically underreported in environmental surveil-
lance reports issued to the public in the late 1980’s 
and early 1990’s, according to the Pueblo Office of 
Environmental Protection in 1992. 
(9) During the 2003 and 2004 regular sessions, 
the New Mexico legislature, through the leadership 
of State Representative Ray Ruiz, enacted Joint Me-
morials calling upon the United States Congress to 
enact comprehensive reforms to subtitle B and sub-
title D of the Act to remedy the injustices to work-
ers made sick from employment by contractors and 
subcontractors at Los Alamos. House Joint Memo-
rial 16 (2003) and House Joint Memorial 20 (2004) 
state in relevant part: ‘‘those employees who are un-
able to obtain records establishing past exposures 
and employees whose claims of radiation exposure 
are in jeopardy of being denied due to scientific un-
certainty in causation determinations should receive 
the benefit of the doubt and be compensated under 
the federal act’’.
(10) The memorial also urges that, in enacting 
Federal reform legislation with respect to the Act: 
‘‘special exposure cohorts be established for employ-
ees in area G and the linear accelerator at Los Ala-
mos national laboratory, and for security guards and 
all construction workers, due to the impossibility of 
accurately reconstructing past radiation doses.’’. 
(11) The predicates for a Special Exposure Co-
hort for Los Alamos workers have been met. For 
some, dose records are missing or are incomplete; 
for others, it is requiring a costly research effort, the 
reliability of the Institute’s dose estimates may be 
open to question, and for virtually all Los Alamos 
claimants, the Institute is taking so long to estimate 
dose that claimants are dying off before they ever 
receive a determination. Justice has been denied 
through interminable delays. New Mexico’s large 
population of potentially eligible claimants at De-
partment of Energy facilities should not have to wait 
another generation or more to be compensated for 
their occupational illnesses.
SEC. 3. DEFINITION OF MEMBER OF SPECIAL EXPOSURE 
COHORT TO INCLUDE WORKERS AT LOS ALA-
MOS NATIONAL LABORATORY, LOS ALAMOS, 
NEW MEXICO. 
(a) IN GENERAL.—Section 3621(14) of the Energy 
Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program 
Act of 2000 (42 U.S.C. 7384l(14)) is amended— 
(1) by redesignating subparagraph (C) as sub-
paragraph (D); and 
(2) by inserting after subparagraph (B) the fol-
lowing: 
‘‘(C) The employee was so employed for a 
number of work days aggregating at least 250 
work days during the period 1945 through 
2000 at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los 
Alamos, New Mexico, as a cohort-eligible Los 
Alamos worker (as defined in paragraph (18)) 
for work carried out under contract to the De-
partment of Energy, and, during such employ-
ment— 
‘‘(i) was monitored through the use 
of— 
‘‘(I) dosimetry badges for expo-
sure at the plant of the external parts 
of employee’s body to radiation; or
‘‘(II) biossays, in vivo moni-
toring, or breath samples for exposure 
at the plant to internal radiation; or 
‘‘(ii) worked in a job that had expo-
sures comparable to a job that is mon-
itored, or should have been monitored, 
under standards of the Department of En-
ergy in effect on the date of the enactment 
of this subparagraph through the use of 
dosimetry badges for monitoring external 
radiation exposures, or bioassays or in vivo 
monitoring for internal radiation expo-
sures.’’. 
(b) COHORT-ELIGIBLE LOS ALAMOS WORKERS.— 
Section 3621 of such Act is further amended by adding 
at the end the following new paragraph: 
‘‘(18) The term ‘cohort-eligible Los Alamos 
worker’ applies to employment— 
‘‘(A) in Area G or at the linear accelerator; 
‘‘(B) as a security guard or construction 
worker; or 
‘‘(C) in any area of Los Alamos National 
Laboratory and in any capacity, if all records 
necessary for radiation dose reconstruction 
under this Act with respect to that employee
have not been received by the National Institute 
for Occupational Safety and Health from the 
Department of Energy or its contractors within 
200 days after receipt of the claim under this 
Act with respect to that employee.’’. 
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