http://onthehillblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/stimulus-workers-confront-legacy-of.htmlThe $2 billion in federal stimulus money came as blessedly as rain to the desert of southeastern Washington state, where the government has spent decades trying to clean up the most productive A-bomb factory of the Cold War era. Phones at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation rang off the hook with calls from people in the nearby metropolitan area of Kennewick, Pasco and Richland who hoped to land one of 4,000 new stimulus jobs -- on top of 11,000 already working at Hanford. Robert Valdez, 33, a father of two young children who was among the early hires, said the starting pay of $17 an hour plus benefits was "life changing." So were the nine weeks of intensive training he underwent to prepare for the hazards of working around a stew of poisonous chemicals and menacing pockets of radiation.
The money for Hanford, part of a $6 billion infusion at nuclear cleanup sites run by the Department of Energy, seems in perfect sync with goals of the stimulus plan -- the much-debated $800 billion package of tax cuts, payments and infrastructure spending that President Barack Obama and Congress approved last year to stanch the bleeding economy. But the twin ambitions of fast jobs and enduring environmental gains are colliding with another goal: worker safety. The crush of new hiring, ProPublica has found, is potentially exposing stimulus workers to beryllium dust, a legacy of the nuclear industry that can cause a debilitating and deadly disease in people who are sensitive to the metal. The risks don't seem to be registering with some workers. Valdez said he received extensive radiation training but spent only four hours on beryllium safety. He left with the impression that beryllium "is in a few buildings, but it's not something to worry about ... I don't think about beryllium on a daily basis."
An Insidious Threat, Hidden From View
But the dangers are real, and they've been compounded by gaps in the government's safety efforts against this elusive threat. Unlike radiation or chemicals, beryllium dust cannot be identified by sight or smell, or tested for in real time. Screening for chronic beryllium disease (CBD) is unreliable, and officials concede they don't know all the places beryllium is hiding at some of the 20 nuclear cleanup sites that received stimulus money, notably Hanford and the Savannah River site in South Carolina, which received $1.6 billion from the stimulus. Though rare, there is no cure for CBD. Cases continue to trickle in despite what the Energy Department and its contractors maintain are huge strides in preventing beryllium exposure.
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Lung Function Slowly Erodes
Data kept by AdvanceMed Hanford, the site medical contractor, show that of some 5,000 workers screened at Hanford in the last five years, 128 have either CBD or beryllium "sensitization," meaning they had an allergic-like reaction to beryllium and will likely develop the disease. In CBD, the immune system attacks beryllium in the lungs and forms scarred areas called granulomas. Patients gradually lose their ability to breathe. Five new cases of beryllium sensitization have been reported at Hanford since last summer.
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The inspection report is due out this month, but ProPublica obtained copies of letters the DOE Office of Health, Safety and Security has already sent to three Hanford contractors citing actions that must be taken in the next 30 days. Among them: Ensure that workers are being properly trained and monitored for exposure, and cease the unsafe practice of declaring buildings uncontaminated before they've been exhaustively tested for beryllium.
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and on and on the poisoning goes
$17 an hr. and you die a slow, gasping for air, early death
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