In letters to Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Tommy Thompson and the operator of the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant (IAAP), U.S. Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) accused both parties of neglecting records needed, under a three year old federal law, to process claims for compensation by former nuclear weapons workers at the plant. Harkin demanded that the Secretary and contractor follow up on requests for these records and speed up processing of the claims, and he requested information on what is being done on the cases of IAAP workers.
Nearly 500 claims from workers who have become ill after working in the facility have been referred to the Department for “dose reconstruction,” the scientific process used to decide if compensation is owed. Despite the large number of claims, the Department has not completed one dose reconstruction for an IAAP worker. Requests for radiation exposure records were sent from HHS to American Ordinance, the current contractor at the IAAP site, as well as to the Department of Energy. American Ordinance has never responded and HHS has apparently never followed up—often over a year later.
“How many former workers at IAAP are waiting for compensation while their claims sit for months awaiting records that will never come?” Harkin wrote to Thompson. “According to your own website, of 12,664 cases accepted nationwide for dose reconstruction, you have only obtained all the records you need for 243. Again I urge you to speed up the processing of these claims.”
Following a letter from Harkin to Thompson earlier this month on delays in compensating workers, former worker Bob Anderson of Burlington, Iowa contacted HHS. He was told that they had sent a request for records to the current plant operator, American Ordnance, in April of 2002, but had never received a reply, and had never followed up in any way. American Ordnance told Anderson and Harkin staff that they are not responding to any requests for records by federal agencies for the compensation process. Anderson first informed Harkin about the “forgotten” nuclear weapons plant at IAAP and raised concerns about the health of the workers there. In his work at the plant he had to crawl over incoming radioactive shipments before they were even examined for leaks or contamination. He later was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma.
Harkin co-sponsored the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act, which was enacted in October 2000. The Department of Health and Human Services is responsible for completing the dose reconstructions that provide the scientific basis for determining whether a worker is owed compensation for cancer under the bill, as well as for naming Special Exposure Cohorts (SEC’s) of workers for whom dose reconstructions cannot be done. Yet two and a half years after the bill was enacted, only a few dozen dose reconstructions have been completed, and the rule for naming SEC’s is not even in place. Harkin wrote the Secretary on May 6 urging him to speed up the process used to decide if the workers at IAAP should receive compensation.
“I have become increasingly concerned at the lack of progress in implementing compensation for former workers at our nation’s nuclear weapons plants,” Harkin wrote. “Many of these workers are impoverished by their health bills, and some are dying, as they wait for the compensation they are owed.”
Harkin is a member of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee that funds HHS. He was a Senate sponsor of the original compensation act in 2000 and of a bill to amend it last fall, and he has obtained government funding for health screening of workers at the plant.