[CPEO-MEF] HEALTH, ENERGY DEPARTMENT: "Hanford [WA] continues to mislead workers about toxic vapor"

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Hanford continues to mislead workers about toxic vapor

Susannah Frame
KING 5 TV News
June 8, 2016

After a 33 year career at Hanford working in the tank farms, Abe Garza of Richland is off the job and he’ll never work again. He has permanent lung damage and brain damage from exposure to toxic chemical vapors at the jobsite. On some days the gasping for air and coughing is so violent he passes out.

“It feels like an elephant is sitting on my chest,” said Garza.

The damage to his brain has left him unable to drive and remember simple tasks. Once an avid reader of classic novels and books on mathematics, it’s now difficult for Garza to read any kind of material. According to his wife, the chemical exposures have turned their lives upside down.

“(It’s) devastate our lives,” said Garza’s wife, Bertolla Bugarin.

Garza is one of an unknown number of current and former Hanford workers who suffer debilitating health effects because of a decades old problem of chemical vapors venting from underground nuclear waste tanks at the former plutonium production facility. Since April 28, 51 workers, a record number, have suspected they’ve been exposed to vapors. Some are still too sick to return to work, mostly due to breathing problems.

…

For the entire story, see
http://www.king5.com/news/local/hanford-continues-to-mislead-workers-about-toxic-vapors/236432342

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Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
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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