ProPublica: Nuclear Workers Waiting Years for Decision on Benefits

Monday, December 3, 2018 | 0

Benefits petitions for ill nuclear workers are languishing for years, ProPublica reported on Friday, including a petition from Los Alamos National Laboratory workers that is still pending after a decade.

The Los Alamos petition was submitted by Andrew Evaskovich, a security guard at the national laboratory who requested benefits on behalf of cancer-stricken colleagues.

In 2000, Congress established a process that allowed groups of workers to receive benefits if they could show that they worked at a nuclear facility, that they had cancer linked to radiation and that lab managers failed to accurately keep track of their exposure over time.

Under the law, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health had six months to review a petition and recommend whether it should be approved or denied.

NIOSH recommended in 2009, 2017 and again in October that Evaskovich's petition be denied. But outside reviewers each time said there were serious problems with the agency’s analysis.

During a meeting last month, members of the federal Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health said NIOSH had failed to answer key questions about record-keeping and exposure at Los Alamos. The panel asked NIOSH to continue its investigation, a process the agency said could take three more years.

And similar petitions at nuclear labs across the country are facing similar hurdles. At the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, a petition has languished for 11 years, ProPublica reported. At Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, workers have been waiting seven years for a final decision.

ProPublica produced the article in partnership with The Santa Fe New Mexican, which is a member of the ProPublica Local Reporting Network.