Jeffery B. Walburn, current guard with restriction, Portsmouth Gaseous Dif- fusion Plant, Greenup, Kentucky David Michaels, Ph.D., MPH, Assistant Secretary for Environment, Safety and Health, U.S. Department of Energy, Washington, DC Steven B. Markowitz, M.D., Professor and Director, Center for the Biology of Natural Systems, Queens College, City University of New York, Flush- Prepared statement Sherrie Graham Farver, Oak Ridge, TN, with attachments 206 Mack A. Orick, Knoxville, TN 287 Edward A. Slavin, Jr., “DOE's Toxic, Hostile Working Environment Violates Human Rights" 294 DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY'S MANAGEMENT OF HEALTH AND SAFETY ISSUES AT ITS GASEOUS DIFFUSION PLANTS IN OAK RIDGE, TENNESSEE, AND PIKETON, OHIO WEDNESDAY, MARCH 22, 2000 U.S. SENATE, COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS, The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:17 a.m., in room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Fred Thompson, Chairman of the Committee, presiding. Present: Senators Thompson, Voinovich, Lieberman, and Akaka. OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN THOMPSON Chairman THOMPSON. The Committee will come to order, please. Senator Lieberman, our Ranking Member, has a matter that is going to take him until about 10:30, so he will be joining us in about 20 minutes. I think Senator Akaka and some others will be joining with us shortly. But we are getting started a little late, so I want to go ahead and begin. We usually like to start these things on time, but we had a vote this morning at 10, so we had to go and vote before we started. I want to welcome all of those who have come from Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Piketon, Ohio to attend this hearing. We certainly appreciate you traveling all this way to be here. We know this issue is very important to you. It is very important to us and to many others at both sites who could not be here with us today, but they are well represented. We are here this morning to discuss one of the more unseemly aspects of the Cold War: The possibility that the Federal Government put workers at its nuclear weapons plants in harm's way without the workers' knowledge. Now, I have been concerned about this issue for some time, since I started hearing from current and former workers in the Oak Ridge area about a pattern of unexplained illnesses that many believed were related to their service at the Department of Energy site. In 1997, the Nashville Tennessean had extensive coverage and interviews of many people. They had done very impressive work that brought this to the attention of not only people in Tennessee, but in other parts of the country. So in 1997, I asked then-Director of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to send a team to Oak (1) Ridge to assess the situation and try to determine if what we were seeing there was truly unique. Unfortunately, in the end, the CDC did not take a broad enough look at the situation to really answer all the questions that had been raised. That, of course, has been a pattern at Oak Ridge and at many of these DOE sites over the years. Studies have been done, some on very narrow populations, and some on larger ones, some apparently showing some correlations and some not able to reach any conclusions at all. The data is mixed, some of it is flawed, and we are left with a situation that is confusing and from which it has been very difficult to draw definite conclusions on every aspect of it. Yet, there is a growing realization that there are illnesses among current and former DOE workers that logic tells us are probably related to their service at these weapons sites. For example, approximately 150 current and former workers at the DOE complex have been diagnosed with Chronic Beryllium Disease. Many more have so-called "beryllium sensitivity," which often develops into Chronic Beryllium Disease. The only way to contract either of these conditions is to be exposed to beryllium powder. The only entities that use beryllium in that form are the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense. There are other examples, perhaps less clear-cut, but certainly worthy of concern-uranium, plutonium, a variety of heavy metals found in people's bodies. Anecdotes about hazardous working conditions where people were unprotected both against exposures they knew were there and exposures of which they were not aware. So it is time for the Federal Government to stop automatically denying any responsibility and face up to the fact that it appears as though it made at least some people sick. The question now is: what can we do about it? And how do we make sure it never happens again? I want to say that I believe the Department of Energy-and especially Dr. Michaels, who will be testifying here this morninghave taken important steps forward in this regard. Rather than continuing to deny any linkage, they have said that if the Department made people sick, then we should compensate them for it. I look forward to working with the Department and with the Oak Ridge community, and with my colleagues in the Senate to determine the best and fairest way to accomplish that goal. In the end, we must remember that these workers were helping to defend our Nation and protect our security. They were patriotic and proud of the work that they were doing. If the Federal Government made mistakes that jeopardized their health and safety, then we need to do what we can do to make it right. A great country can do nothing less. Senator Voinovich. OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR VOINOVICH Senator VOINOVICH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to first of all thank you for holding this hearing this morning. It is very important to the people in Southern Ohio and your own State and I think that this hearing has national implications in terms of how this country treats people that have been injured as a result of working at nuclear facilities that are important to our Nation's national security. I would like to thank Sam Ray and Jeff Walburn for your courage in coming here today and relaying their personal experiences to the Members of this Committee. Since 1954, and the start of the Cold War, the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon, Ohio, has served as one of a handful of our Nation's processors of high-quality nuclear material. The main purpose of the plant at Piketon was to enrich uranium for the use in nuclear weapons and propulsion systems for our naval vessels. Sometimes people forget about the fact that almost all of our major naval vessels are propelled by nuclear power. Over the years, thousands of dedicated men and women in the civilian workforce at Piketon helped keep our military fully supplied and our Nation fully prepared to meet any potential threat. Their success is measured in part with the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union. However, their success came at a high price. Over the years, the Columbus Dispatch has run a number of articles dealing with health and safety incidences among the employees at Piketon. The most recent series of articles showed that for decades, some workers at Piketon did not know they had been exposed to dangerous levels of radioactive material, because, until recently, proper safety precautions were rarely taken to adequately protect workers' safety. Even when precautions were taken, the application of protective standards was certainly inconsistent. For years, few workers dared openly speak about the loss of friends and co-workers to illness, their own diminished health and the increased risk that they had placed on their families. Many employees fear that exposing such health and safety problems would jeopardize the very existence of the plant, and the thousands of good-paying jobs it provided the community, and there are still employees that are still unwilling to come forward. To a great extent, those who did complain to management were labeled as "malingerers" or "malcontents" and were told that their health complaints were "unrelated" or "all in their head." Mr. Chairman, to me, it is unconscionable that people who were in management could be so insensitive and uncaring about their fellow workers. If we think about the two great commandments, love of God, and love of fellow man, certainly that second great commandment was broken over and over again at that plant in terms of how they treated their fellow workers and their fellow man. Our witnesses today representing the workers of the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant have legitimate questions: What kind of material was handled? When was it handled? What kind of exposure risk existed at the entire facility? Are there still existing risks? And, what are the long-term health concerns of workers at the facility and for their families? The government and its contractors must provide clear facts regarding the risks that Piketon's employees have endured, and the same thing at Oak Ridge. Once those facts are known, it is necessary for the Federal Government to provide whatever health care |