Gerry Giovacchini believes the tumors in his neck, arm and eyes, as well as one in his spinal column that fractured two vertebrae and invaded his right lung, were caused by radiation exposure during the 26 years he worked at Sandia/California National Laboratories in Livermore.
In 2002, he applied for compensation through a government program for Cold-War-era Department of Energy workers exposed to radioactive and toxic materials that made them ill.
Five years later, he still hasn’t been paid.
He’s not alone. Since 2001 when the federal Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act went into effect, 148,181 claims have been filed. So far, just 21 percent or about 31,000 – have been paid.
Qualifying workers are eligible for a $150,000 lump sum payment, medical expenses and lost wages.
Tom Chatmon is still waiting. His job at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory for 14 years was to oversee and transport plutonium, uranium and other radioactive materials. He contracted multiple myeloma, a cancer that has been linked to radiation exposure.
His compensation claim, filed in 2002, was denied in November.
The federal government got more than it bargained for when it approved the compensation program. At the time, it estimated it would cover more than 3,000 workers and cost U.S. taxpayers $13 million a year for a decade.
More than five times that much has been spent on administrative costs, and $2.8 billion has been paid to claimants. The U.S. Department of Labor, which oversees the program, expects to receive about 20,000 new claims this year and estimates more than $4.5 billion more in compensation will be paid through 2011.
“The energy program is a complex one, and care is taken to ensure claims are thorough, fair and swift,” a labor department official wrote in an e-mail response to questions.
Accusations of lagging
But many workers suspect the government of dragging its heels and using any possible excuse to deny claims.
Either way, the odds are not in the claimants’ favor.
Of claims that have been ruled on by the Department of Labor, 62 percent have been denied.
For former employees of Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, 73 percent of the compensation decisions have been denials. At Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 76 percent have been denied.
And at Sandia’s Livermore site where Giovacchini worked, more than 80 percent have been turned down.
Many claimants are still struggling to navigate a complicated process that places the burden of proof on the workers, some of whom are too sick to shoulder it.
“The U.S. government is acknowledging that we made a mistake,” Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson said when the compensation program was first announced. “We need to right this wrong.”
Instead, workers and their families feel they have been wronged again.
Employees from 363 laboratories and work sites across the country that were run by the Department of Energy and its contractors are eligible for the compensation program. People at these sites were exposed to hazardous materials, often while working on nuclear weapons.
Giovacchini says the sites where he developed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma coincide with areas exposed to radiation.
For six of his years at Sandia, he was a technician in an X-ray laboratory, and he thinks he repeatedly received low levels of ionizing radiation. Once while calibrating an X-ray beam used to analyze nuclear material, the shutter that was supposed to turn off the beam failed to close. He was exposed to radiation for 20 or 30 minutes before he realized what had happened.
Like many workers, Giovacchini wore a dosimeter badge on the job to keep track of how much cumulative radiation he received. If his badge recorded a cumulative dose considered high enough to cause his specific cancer, his claim would be approved.
Lost data
But the lab can’t locate his dosimeter readings.
“My case has merit,” he said. “Except I can’t prove it.”
Missing and incomplete employment records are a frequent problem for claimants, and filling the gaps is often left up to the sick workers. For some, simply proving they worked for the DOE can be a challenge.
Often, the hardest step is proving the exposure.
Even when dosimeter records are available, the readings may be inaccurate because badges weren’t worn properly. Machinists and other workers often kept them tucked behind lead aprons so they wouldn’t interfere with their work. Giovacchini wore his badge on his belt, below the table the X-ray instruments were on.
Some exposures were never monitored or documented.
For family members of workers who have died, the task of gathering all of the necessary information is even harder. Because much of the work was classified, loved ones were kept in the dark about it.
Determining whether workers received enough radiation to make them sick is up to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. The process, known as dose reconstruction, can take years.
According to NIOSH, collecting information from the DOE and from claimants is very time-consuming. The longer people worked, the more sites they worked at, the more things they were exposed to and the more types of cancer they have, the longer the process can take.
Great care is taken to ensure estimates are “claimant favorable,” said Jim Neton, associate director for science in the Office of Compensation Analysis and Support at NIOSH.
“My job entailed accountability of nuclear materials,” Chatmon said. He spent entire days in a vault watching over the materials. Sometimes he went to the Livermore airport to pick up spent plutonium cores from test explosions at the Nevada Test Site and brought them to the lab for analysis.
“At the time, I didn’t know anything about plutonium or uranium. We were told we weren’t dealing with anything dangerous.”
Chatmon says eight of the 15 people who worked in his group, including himself, have developed cancer, and many of those have died. His claim was denied four years after he filed it, but he has appealed.
Computer calculation
The labor department makes the final call on whether to approve a claim, largely based on the dose reconstruction in most cases.
The radiation dose, along with what is known about the rate of a given cancer in the general population, and the effects of high doses of radiation on victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, are plugged into a software program that calculates the probability that a claimant’s job exposure caused his or her cancer.
If the probability is greater than 50 percent, the cancer was “more likely than not” due to exposure, and the claim is approved. The underlying scientific assumption is that the risk of cancer goes up in a linear fashion as a radiation dose is increased.
A National Academy of Sciences panel in 2005 supported that assumption, but also concluded that while low doses are less likely to be harmful, any amount of radiation can be potentially unsafe.
Some workers say the government has intentionally set the bar too high in order to keep the cost of the compensation program down.
Labor department officials have repeatedly insisted that they are not trying to keep compensation costs down, and point to the $2.8 billion that has been paid.
At a congressional hearing in December of the House Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims, which oversees the compensation program, chairman Rep. John Hostettler, R-Ind, cited memos and e-mails showing that the labor department was pressuring NIOSH to limit claims.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose, who took over as chair of the subcommittee, said she is “deeply distressed by the Department of Labor’s inaction on this matter,” and will work to ensure workers get the benefits they were promised. At her request, the Government Accounting Office is looking into the handling of the compensation program, and the subcommittee will hold hearings once the report is released.
In the meantime, some sick workers from Sandia, Livermore and Berkeley labs are feeling disillusioned and betrayed. Others have died while waiting for compensation.
Giovacchini remains committed. “These people served their time in the laboratories during the Cold War, and this is they way they’re treating them now,” he said. “It’s an embarrassment to the United States.”
Contact Betsy Mason at bmason@cctimes.com or (925) 847-2158.
