[CPEO-MEF] Pantex nuclear workers

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Cold War Casualties: Waiting for word 
Workers look to Pantex's past for answers to illness, death

By JIM McBRIDE
The Amarillo Globe-News 
October 3, 2004

Ted Shutt died waiting - just like he thought he would.

Shutt, a soft-spoken man with a friendly smile, testified in an Amarillo
public hearing four years ago that he retired from his Pantex job
healthy as a horse. But soon afterward, doctors cut a cancerous lobe
from his lung.

In March, the former Pantex worker died after cancer spread throughout
his body and took its deadly toll. Shutt, 68, left behind a wife, a son,
a daughter and two grandchildren.

Two years before his death, Shutt predicted he'd never hear the Labor
Department's decision on whether 20 years of dismantling and assembling
nuclear weapons caused the cancer that finally killed him.

...

for the entire article, see
http://www.amarillo.com/stories/100304/new_pantex.shtml

COMPANIION STORY:


Scientists look for pieces to radiation puzzle 

By JIM McBRIDE
The Amarillo Globe-News 
October 3, 2004

For decades, employee radiation monitoring at the Pantex Plant and other
weapons production sites often was a secondary concern as workers
churned out thousands of nuclear warheads, bombs and artillery shells.

But in April 2000, then Energy Secretary Bill Richardson reversed the
government's long-standing policy of opposing employees' claims that
work-related exposures to radioactive and toxic materials were killing
or sickening them by the thousands.

"We are moving forward to do the right thing by these workers,"
Richardson said as he announced government plans to begin compensating
sick workers and their survivors. "The men and women who served our
nation in the nuclear weapons industries of World War II and the Cold
War labored under dangerous conditions with some of the most hazardous
materials known to mankind."

...

for the entire article, see
http://www.amarillo.com/stories/100304/new_pieces.shtml

-- 


Lenny Siegel
Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
c/o PSC, 278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org
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