RICHLAND -- A cancer survivor asked a federal advisory board Wednesday to consider the suffering of Hanford workers and their families because of the deceit of a company that performed lab tests in the late '80s.
The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health's Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, meeting in St. Louis on Wednesday, discussed whether to ease rules for allowing ill Hanford Plutonium Finishing Plant workers to claim $150,000 in compensation.
The board made no decision, instead referring the issue to its Hanford working group for further discussion.
Oscar Valero, who worked at the Plutonium Finishing Plant during the years that lab tests were falsified, filed a petition with NIOSH to ease compensation requirements for workers there who later suffered from cancer.
If the federal government agrees to form a special exposure cohort for those ill workers, more people or their survivors could be eligible for $150,000 in compensation and the compensation would be paid without the sometimes lengthy process of estimating radiation exposure for each worker. Medical expenses also are paid by the program.
Valero started work at Hanford in 1984 after serving as a Marine and continues to work there today.
However, in 2002 he was diagnosed with gastric cancer and has filed a claim under the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program, which compensates workers or their survivors if their cancer is determined to have been caused by exposure to radiation at Hanford or other Department of Energy sites.
Surgery was needed to remove two-thirds of his stomach and half of his esophagus, he told the board by telephone. Radiation treatments left his heart damaged.
"I live with physical limitations," he said. "My family and I bear emotional scars and psychological trauma. Our lives have been affected and changed forever."
The federal government has three times estimated the amount of radiation he was exposed to and given him three different results, he said. But none of them has shown that, in the government's opinion, the estimated radiation caused his cancer.
However, if radiation exposure cannot be adequately estimated for groups of workers, a special exposure cohort may be approved and workers automatically compensated for any of about 20 types of cancer that studies have linked to radiation exposure.
Valero and his attorney, Tom Foulds of Seattle, believe that problems with lab tests -- called bioassays -- of worker's bodily waste from 1987 through 1989 mean that radiation exposure for those workers cannot be adequately estimated. Urine and other samples were tested for radiation.
The company, U.S. Testing Co., admitted wrongdoing, said Sam Glover, a health physicist for NIOSH. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, which had hired U.S. Testing as a subcontractor, terminated their contract.
Among allegations made were that some managers were using cocaine on U.S. Testing Co. premises and that some test results were falsified.
However, NIOSH has recommended against approving Valero's petition to form a special exposure cohort for Plutonium Finishing Plant workers in the late '80s. Problems were identified with ecological samples rather than bioassays of workers' urine samples to check for internal radiation exposure, according to NIOSH.
It believes that based on a University of Washington report focusing on the bioassays, plus other data available to estimate worker exposure, adequate estimates can be made of individual worker's exposure.
However, another report commissioned by state and federal officials shows there were problems with procedures for the bioassay tests also and they cannot be relied upon, Foulds argued.
"I understand this is scientific based information, but let we also appeal to the sentiments of your heart in that you will do the righteous thing and your actions will right a wrong," Valero told the board.
A special exposure cohort already has been established that eases compensation requirements for most Hanford workers in jobs that could have exposed them to radiation while working for at least 250 days from October 1943 through June 1972. Possibly expanding the cohort to later years also is being considered.
For information on the compensation program, call 509-946-3333 or 888-654-0014.
Tri-City Herald reported this story at www.tri-cityherald.com
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