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Was there ever a time when our government was honorable?
Subject: Front Page Story From The Washington (DC) Post
By Michael Alison Chandler and Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, May 12, 2007; Page A01
Walter McKenzie's assignment toward the end of the Cold War was to
mop up after mishaps at a nuclear weapons factory. With a crew of
other laborers from rural Georgia, he swabbed away leaks and spills
inside the secret buildings, until one day his body became so
contaminated with radiation that alarms at the factory went off as he
passed.
"They couldn't scrub the radiation off my skin -- even after four
showers," McKenzie, 52, recalled of his most terrifying day at the
Savannah River nuclear weapons plant near Aiken, S.C. "They took my
clothes, my watch and even my ring, and sent me home in rubber
slippers and a jumpsuit."
Walter McKenzie, who worked at the Savannah River nuclear weapons
plant near Aiken, S.C., had cancer and blames radiation exposure at
work. The government deemed that unlikely. (By Michael Williamson --
The Washington Post)
Workers Seek Compensation for Exposure
Most of the 103,000 workers, retirees and family members who have
sought help from a federal program intended to atone for decades of
hazardous working conditions in nuclear weapons plants can't prove
they were exposed to something that might have made them sick.
From the Archives
The Washington Post's investigative 1999-2000 series on workers
contaminated at federal nuclear facilities.
• In Harm's Way, But in the Dark , Aug. 8, 1999
• Richardson Orders Probe Of Uranium Plant in Ky., Aug. 9, 1999
• A Deathly Postscript Comes Back to Life, Aug. 11, 1999
• Radioactive Metals May Have Left U.S. Plant, Aug. 14, 1999
• Invisible Threat Seeps Into Paducah, Aug. 21, 1999
• Evidence Mounts in Paducah, Aug. 22, 1999
• Radioactive Ooze Found In Paducah, Aug. 29, 1999
» Full Coverage
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