Aid For Ailing Arms Workers
The Clinton administration is ready to offer compensation to workers at uranium enrichment plants sickened by radiation exposure.
Rep. Ted Strickland, D-Ohio, met with officials from Vice President Al Gore's office on Tuesday and said afterwards the plan is to treat workers "at plants" in Ohio and Kentucky the "same offering as much as $100,000 to workers suffering certain types of cancer".
But CBS News Correspondent Peter Maer reports that while the plan could lead to payments to thousands of people who became sick while working at nuclear bomb plants - a Piketon, Ohio plant worker Jeffrey Walburn says he has chronic respiratory problems and other symptoms that permanently remain with him.
"It weaves itself into the fiber of your life. You're at work whether you're at work or not. It's in your house seven days a week, 24 hours a day 365 days a year."
Walburn says the federal plan is a "good start" but he'd like to see the government require plant "operators" to compensate affected workers.
Nearly all of the employees worked for private companies that operated the plants for the government.
Another retired Piketon, Ohio, worker, Robert Elkins, blames a nervous breakdown and other health problems on his long career at the plant. He contends any health risk was concealed.
"They keep saying 'it won't hurt you.' Now we find out its very dangerous."
Until this year, the government had refused to acknowledge workers' health problems might be linked to work at the plants, all of which were part of the U.S. nuclear weapons production effort during the Cold War.
The new federal effort reverses longtime government opposition to most radiation claims.
Richardson has said previously he is committed to addressing the health and environmental concerns involving the gaseous diffusion plants in Ohio and Kentucky, a former uranium processing plant in Tennessee, and at Energy Department plants that handled beryllium, a metal used in nuclear weapons.
Richardson already has asked Congress to approve a compensation program for a limited number of workers with cancers linked to radiation exposure, and for workers with incurable beryllium disease.
The compensation proposal, which is before Congress, would provide medical benefits, lost-wage reimbursement, optional job retraining or a single $100,000 cash payment to workers suffering illnesses caused by beryllium exposure.
The administration has proposed similar compensation for workers at the Paducah plant.
As with the Paducah plan, the proposal for workers at the Piketon plant in Ohio would cover those who spent at least one year on the job between 1953 and Feb. 1, 1992, who "were badged or should have been badged" to measure their radiation exposure and who contracted one of a specific list of diseases, Strickland said.
Strickland is working with Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-Ky., on another compensation plan that would give medcal care and $200,000 to sickened workers at every nuclear weapons plant.
Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, also has been working on a compensation plan, but it has not yet been introduced. His spokesman said workers deserve more than what is being offered by the Clinton administration.
Details are to be announced by the White House Wednesday. The plan is expected to cost about $400 million over the first five years, with the price declining in subsequent years as fewer claims are settled.