BILL WOULD HELP RADIATION-SICK WORKERS.

Byline: Staff and Wire Services

SIMI VALLEY - Some Santa Susana Field Lab workers might be among Cold War-era employees nationwide who would be eligible for $150,000 each and medical care under a bill approved by the House on Wednesday.

On a 382-31 vote, the House sent the Senate a bill that includes provisions for a new entitlement program for workers who contracted cancer or incurable lung disease.

There could be as many as 14,000 workers made sick by their jobs at nuclear weapons plants or uranium mines, including 10,000 miners, officials said.

``It is a great day for the workers at the nation's nuclear facilities who were exposed to excesses of radiation. That includes the Santa Susana workers,'' said anti-nuclear activist Dan Hirsch, a member of the group monitoring site cleanup.

``However, it remains to be seen whether they will ever receive the compensation to which they are entitled.''

Because the House bill separates workers into two groups - those whose cancers are presumed to be work-related and others whose eligibility has to be determined - Hirsch said local workers may not be compensated.

The Rocketdyne lab, in the hills between Simi Valley and Chatsworth, and a Canoga Park facility are on a list of 165 sites known to have handled radioactive materials named in the House-approved bill.

A spokesman for Boeing, which now owns the facility, said the company has not considered its workers part of the nuclear-weapons work force.

``We don't know what workers they're applying this to. . . . We did do processing of plutonium at the hot lab that was shipped to other facilities. It may or may not have been used in nuclear weapons,'' said spokesman Dan Beck.

``By far the vast majority of the work at those facilities was in research in nuclear power.''

A pair of UCLA health studies of Santa Susana workers released in 1997 and 1999 found higher cancer mortality rates among those exposed to radiation and certain chemicals. Researchers said radiation was responsible for 27.3 percent of such deaths among workers who inhaled or ingested radioactive particles.

The compensation program was part of the 2001 Defense Authorization Act and is estimated to cost taxpayers $1.9 billion over 10 years, officials said.

Each worker made sick by exposure to radiation, beryllium or silica would receive the lump sum and medical benefits. Heirs of dead workers would receive the payment.

Nationwide, about 600,000 people worked in the weapons complex during the Cold War, and 3,000 to 4,000 of them or their heirs are expected to be eligible for compensation. About 10,000 miners are expected to be eligible.

For nuclear weapons workers whose eligibility would be determined by the government, the decision would be based on reconstruction of radiation exposure.