The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, or NIOSH, recommended that people who worked at Mound Buildings R and SW from March 1, 1959, through March 5, 1980, be granted special status that assumes their illnesses are caused by occupational exposures.
The Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, which makes recommendations to the White House concerning the Labor Department’s Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program, is expected to act on the recommendation by the Friday close of a three-day hearing in Niagara Falls, N.Y.
The status is important because those workers don’t have to undergo a technical paperwork process called dose reconstruction to show their illness was likely caused by on-the-job exposures. Of 464 cases of dose reconstructions of Mound workers with final decisions, 318 have been denied and 146 approved. Critics say dose reconstructions are inaccurate and slanted against claimants.
Workers in the old cave, which was closed in 1959, already have received the special status, as have workers in the pre-Mound Dayton Project of the 1940s. The entire Mound Plant has been decontaminated at a cost exceeding $1 billion.
NIOSH scientist Brant Ulsh said his agency’s research found that a worker in an office known as SW-19 underwent testing for radiation in early 1979 and had a high whole body count consistent with plutonium exposure. That July, officials found high radon counts near a small hole in a wall and cracks along baseboards. Ulsh called it “technically enhanced radon layered on top of naturally occurring radon.”
Because the leak went unmonitored for 20 years, it’s impossible to reconstruct anyone’s potential exposure, he said.
Radon is the second leading cause of lung cancer, after cigarette smoking, according to the National Cancer Institute.
Ulsh said most of the radon has a very short half life and is quickly disbursed in a room. There is no evidence that the entire R-SW complex was contaminated, Ulsh said, but the Labor Department said it couldn’t administer a program for a single office, so both buildings were included.
Mound officials remediated the radon problem in 1980 and checked radon levels several times thereafter, he said. At some point after 1980, workers were moved out of the area.
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