NEWS

Government Sets Compensation Guidelines for Radiation Exposure

F. B. Dunn

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has issued final rules under which federal workers exposed to radiation will be compensated for job-related cancers. Since World War II, an estimated 600,000 federal employees and contractors may have been exposed to radiation at nuclear weapons test sites and manufacturing plants.

In 2000, Congress passed a compensation law in response to political pressure from workers at the Department of Energy’s Paducah, Ky., uranium enrichment plant. Under the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act, workers from Paducah and similar facilities at Portsmouth, Ohio, and Oak Ridge, Tenn., can receive $150,000 plus coverage for future cancer-related medical expenses. Workers involved in underground nuclear blasts on Amchitka Island, Alaska, also qualify for automatic compensation if they develop a malignancy.

However, the DOE and its contractors have operated many other mines and factories where workers handled plutonium, uranium, and other radionuclides. The final DHHS rules, issued May 2, lay out guidelines under which these employees can file for compensation if they have cancer or one of two other illnesses, beryllium sickness and silicosis.

Because the law includes workers employed from the early Cold War through the 21st century, the true number who may be eligible for compensation is impossible to calculate, said Larry Elliott, director of the Office of Compensation Analysis and Support at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "Six hundred thousand is probably a low estimate," he said. Given that roughly 25% of the population receives a diagnosis of cancer—a figure that could increase among nuclear weapons workers, said Elliott—150,000 or more cancer-burdened employees and their families could be eligible for compensation.

Estimating Exposure

That huge figure has Elliott preparing for an onslaught of claims filed under the compensation rules. His office is responsible for the painstaking process of estimating the amount and type of radiation each employee encountered. Each of these reconstructions, said Elliott, will take, on average, between 90 and 180 days.

However, because each case is unique, simple cases—say, a worker who spent 3 days at one plant doing one activity—can be handled quickly, in under a week. More complicated scenarios—such as a claimant with a 45-year work history featuring dozens or hundreds of tasks—could take 6 months or more. "It’s so situation dependent," said Elliott. "We believe we can do a dose reconstruction with very limited information: type of radionuclide, kind of work, and duration of work."

However, tracking down even this limited information can be arduous. First, one of Elliott’s staff combs DOE medical and employment archives. In some cases, the DOE may have records of specific exposures gleaned from dosimeters worn by the employee. If not, the staff member sifts through files from employees with jobs similar to the claimant’s.

Next, the CDC contacts the claimant for an extensive interview. Any additional information on work routines and the like is recorded. If the former employee is deceased, the CDC tries to gather the relevant details from family members and former co-workers.

A health physicist then runs a series of dosing models to estimate internal and external exposure to alpha, beta, gamma, X-ray, and neutron radiation. This information gets sent to the claimant and to the Department of Labor, which coordinates the claim process. The Labor department then makes a final determination of the government’s culpability using a computer program developed by the National Cancer Institute. If the program determines that the employee’s cancer is "as likely as not" to have been caused by workplace radiation, the claimant will receive the $150,000 lump sum and coverage of future medical bills.

To date, Elliott’s office has completed a total of seven dose reconstructions. A backlog of 4,000 early claims await attention, all filed since Oct. 11, 2001. He expects 8,000 to 10,000 annually. This volume of dose reconstructions is "completely unprecedented," according to a fact sheet from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. Fred Blosser, a spokesperson for the agency, said NIOSH is ramping up its capacity to perform dose reconstructions as quickly as possible by enlisting heavy support from private contractors.

The process, though time-consuming, is engineered to shift statistical uncertainties to the claimant’s advantage, said Elliott. "We are trying to be claimant friendly." Despite this assurance, it could be a decade or longer before the final tally of radiation exposure-related malignancies becomes clear.



             
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