6,000 TAINTED AT LAB? WORKERS MAY NOT KNOW OF CHANCE FOR FEDERAL AID.

Byline: Beth Barrett Staff Writer

Up to 6,000 former San Fernando Valley nuclear research workers could be eligible for $150,000 each in compensation and lifetime medical benefits under a federal program that agencies have failed to aggressively promote in Southern California, the Daily News has learned.

The sweeping national program adopted by Congress late last year for the first time recognizes that Department of Energy contract workers at 317 sites around the country might have been harmed by their Cold War work with radioactive materials, including beryllium, a metal which in dust form can cause fatal lung disease.

The Santa Susana Field Laboratory, located in the hills between Simi Valley and Chatsworth, is listed both as a DOE nuclear site and as one of only eight beryllium vendors nationwide.

Yet the Department of Labor, responsible for overseeing the program, has largely ignored Southern California while holding public meetings, setting up regional centers for applicants and testing workers for beryllium sensitivity elsewhere.

An important July 31 deadline is approaching for former workers to send in their applications to be eligible for the earliest possible medical reimbursements. Applicants can continue to file after the deadline, but would receive medical benefits later.

``I think it's definitely cheating the employees who are sick and don't know there's the program,'' said Bonnie Klea, a West Hills bladder cancer survivor who worked nine years as a company secretary delivering paychecks in the lab's high-security areas without a radiation badge or safety training.

``I've asked the Department of Labor for a meeting. They said they wouldn't do it unless there were a lot of phone calls that show a lot of interest. It seems like a dumb way to run the system. It's up to them to come into the community and to let people know.''

Pete Turcic, who oversees the compensation program for the Department of Labor in Washington, D.C., said the agency will service areas like Los Angeles with ``traveling resource centers,'' but that no date has been set.

``We're under such tight deadlines,'' Turcic said. ``We're stretched as far as we can go.''

During the Cold War, there were about 654,000 nuclear workers nationwide, with about 51,000 of those at 20 facilities in California. While successful claims are anticipated from only a fraction of those workers, the bill to taxpayers is anticipated to be about $2 billion over the next five years, according to Labor Department estimates. Workers who qualify for the compensation package must agree not to sue.

Activists said the program - if run properly - represents a ``sea change'' in government attitudes after years of denial.

``For half a century, the federal government has denied any of its nuclear facilities harmed any of its workers and they fought tooth and nail any time an employee tried to get recompensated for a cancer,'' said Dan Hirsch, president of the Committee to Bridge the Gap, a local nonprofit nuclear watchdog group.

``The federal government now concedes its workers were harmed and it is going to try to remedy the situation with compensation.''

The extent of historical nuclear experimentation conducted by the Santa Susana lab's former owners, Rockwell International, was first documented by the Daily News in 1989, followed by epidemiological studies that showed elevated cancer death rates among workers exposed to external radiation.

Documents further revealed that two dozen workers were overexposed to uranium dust in 1966 and 1967 at the company's De Soto Avenue plant.

But its former beryllium operations were never disclosed prior to a June 11 notice in the Federal Register.

Robert Alvarez, senior policy adviser to former Energy Secretary Bill Richardson and now the head of a New York foundation advocating for nuclear workers, said he was surprised by the Santa Susana lab designation as a beryllium vendor.

He said the government should immediately begin beryllium screening - which can detect sensitivity to the metal, an indicator before the progressive beryllium disease develops. Victims' lungs scar and eventually they choke to death.

``If there is no beryllium screening of workers there, it should be done forthwith,'' Alvarez said.

DOE officials said screening is being done at some sites, but none mentioned being aware of the health tests being done for former Santa Susana workers.

An official with Rocketdyne Propulsion & Power, a business unit of The Boeing Co., which purchased Rockwell, said the lab's designation as a beryllium vendor surprised the firm, saying that while the metal was used in the research reactors, it was not used in large quantities.

``We certainly utilized beryllium for certain components in some of the reactors we manufactured in the SNAP (Systems for Nuclear Auxiliary Power) program, designed for space applications, but I don't believe that warrants us being a beryllium vendor, someone who processes large amounts of beryllium ore,'' said Phil Rutherford. the company's manager of radiation safety.

The SNAP program was discontinued in the late 1960s, Rutherford said.

He said that while the Department of Labor is the lead agency in the workers' compensation program, Rocketdyne has published information in its online newsletter with a link to the Department of Labor Web site, and company officials have said it will cooperate with providing individual exposure records.

Rutherford said no review of employees' records has been made independently to try to determine the number of workers who might qualify for the program, noting that the DOE estimates only about one-half of 1 percent of workers nationwide will qualify.

Alvarez, the former energy adviser, said the program, despite its flaws, in unprecedented.

``It's a very big step. I'm unaware of any other law in any country in the world where a government has basically set up a formal, nationwide program to compensate its workers.''

Added Klea, the former company secretary, ``I'm excited, because the truth finally came out. They denied all these years they did anything wrong to the workers. The truth is, they're on the list.''

INFORMATION

For information on the compensation program, call the Department of Labor toll-free at [phone], or go to the agency's Web site at www.dol.gov, where there is a link to the program.

CAPTION(S):

box, map

Box:

INFORMATION (see text)

Map:

HEALTH PROBLEMS

SOURCE: Daily News research