[CPEO-MEF] Nuke workers' claims

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Thousands of Nuclear Arms Workers See Cancer Claims Denied or Delayed

By Michael Alison Chandler and Joby Warrick
Washington Post
May 12, 2007

Walter McKenzie's assignment toward the end of the Cold War was to mop 
up after mishaps at a nuclear weapons factory. With a crew of other 
laborers from rural Georgia, he swabbed away leaks and spills inside the 
secret buildings, until one day his body became so contaminated with 
radiation that alarms at the factory went off as he passed.

"They couldn't scrub the radiation off my skin -- even after four 
showers," McKenzie, 52, recalled of his most terrifying day at the 
Savannah River nuclear weapons plant near Aiken, S.C. "They took my 
clothes, my watch and even my ring, and sent me home in rubber slippers 
and a jumpsuit."

Later, when doctors discovered the first of 19 malignant tumors on his 
bladder, McKenzie followed the same torturous path as thousands of 
nuclear weapons workers with cancer: He filed a claim for federal 
compensation. It was denied.

Unable to access secret government files, or even some of his own 
personnel records, McKenzie could not sufficiently prove that he was 
exposed to something that may have made him sick. Nor can most of the 
104,000 other workers, retirees and family members who have sought help 
from a federal program intended to atone for decades of hazardous 
working conditions at scores of nuclear weapons facilities around the 
country.

...

For the entire article, see
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/11/AR2007051102277.html?hpid=topnews

--


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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