Group items tagged

Pug Renwand admits he's scared. He's scared of the day when his Chronic Beryllium Disease, the lung illness that has afflicted him for 10 years, might force him to carry an oxygen tank around to help him breathe. He worries he might lose the dream house he worked so hard to build because he can't afford mortgage payments. He said he can't work for more than a few hours a day without becoming tired and winded, so he doesn't have a job. And he wonders whether CBD eventually will kill him.

Disc containing personal info for thousands of DOE employees lost; local workers not at risk OAK RIDGE - Free medical screenings for workers at Oak Ridge and other Department of Energy sites have been put on hold while DOE investigates an incident in which personal information could have been compromised. The department also is establishing a new protocol for handling such data. The incident involved a lost disc containing the personal information for thousands of current and former employees at DOE's Idaho National Laboratory. Local officials emphasized Tuesday that no information involving Oak Ridge workers had been placed at risk.

H.R. 134 would amend the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act of 2000 to extend and increase the authority for the ombudsman under the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program.

HHS gives notice as required by 42 CFR 83.12(e) of a decision to evaluate a petition to designate a class of employees for the Bliss & Laughlin Steel facility, in Buffalo, NY, to be included in the Special Exposure Cohort under the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act of 2000. The initial proposed definition for the class being evaluated, subject to revision as warranted by the evaluation, is as follows: Facility: Bliss & Laughlin Steel facility. Location: Buffalo, NY. Job Titles and/or Job Duties: All employees. Period of Employment: January 1, 1948 through December 31, 1998.

Former Hanford construction workers have an increased risk of death from a blood cancer linked to radiation and another cancer linked to asbestos, according to a new study. The study published in the September issue of the American Journal of Industrial Medicine drew on data collected in the Building Trades National Medical Screening Program for Hanford and three other Department of Energy sites. "While several studies have investigated mortality risks among (Department of Energy) production workers, little data exist concerning mortality among construction and trade workers ...," the study said. It looked at 8,976 workers who had participated in the building trades screening program at the four sites and had an initial screening interview from 1998 through 2004. Those interviews were compared to the National Death Index, which had information only through 2004 when the study began.

After I wrote my piece this past week about Dr. Herbert Clark from RPI passing away I realized that I had written a piece about this subject a bit more deeply 20 years ago. I had interviewed a man who was an "Atomic Vet," one of the thousands of our brave soldiers who became guinea pigs during the flurry of atomic tests that began in the 1940's. I am reproducing here again for those not associated with the subject and I will follow it up with an update on the issue in the near future. I published this piece in Hardcopy for the Common Good, a monthly social issues magazine I published in the 1980s. This article appeared in the December, 1989 issue - 20 years ago. What About the Atomic Vets? When Saratoga's John Delay was drafted into the army in 1956, at age 19, he thought his time would be spent like most post war GI's - perform his assigned duties and go back home. What he didn't know was that he would become a human guinea pig in a series of radiation experiments conducted by the U.S. Government. Many people have compared these experiments to the human atrocities of Germany and Japan during the second war.

Interview with Jan Lovelace, widow of poisoned nuclear complex worker Harry Lovelace, details the trials both have gone through to try get help through the Energy Employee Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act of 2000 (EEOICPA) administered by the U.S. Dept. of Labor. Jan also describes the extreme personal difficulties of Harry's illness, attributed to his work as a fireman at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. Ten-minutes, filmed by Wes Rehberg, music by Paul Page, ©2009 Wild Clearing

Interview with Jan Lovelace, widow of poisoned nuclear complex worker Harry Lovelace, details the trials both have gone through to try get help through the Energy Employee Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act of 2000 (EEOICPA) administered by the U.S. Dept. of Labor. Jan also describes the extreme personal difficulties of Harry's illness, attributed to his work as a fireman at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. Ten-minutes, filmed by Wes Rehberg, music by Paul Page, ©2009 Wild Clearing

Americans may be receiving too much radiation from medical tests whose value has not been proven, researchers reported today in the New England Journal of Medicine. More than two-thirds of Americans underwent at least one such imaging procedure in the three years covered by the study, reported Dr. Reza Fazel of the Emory University School of Medicine and colleagues. The two biggest contributors to the radiation exposure are CT scans, which use a series of X-rays to produce a three-dimensional image of the body, and heart perfusion scanning to measure blood flow through the arteries leading to the heart. In that test, radioactive technetium-99m is injected into blood vessels and its progress through the heart monitored with external radiation detectors.

A medical mystery: As overall cancer rates fall, why are thyroid cancer rates rising? Diagnoses of cancer in this gland in the neck are increasing about 6 percent a year, faster than cancers found anywhere else, according to one National Cancer Institute analysis. Researchers know one big reason: The many medical scans Americans have, for everything from neck pain to artery plaque, are turning up thousands of tiny thyroid tumors that otherwise might go undetected and often would do no harm. "We call them 'incidentalomas,' " says Amy Chen, a head and neck surgeon at Emory University in Atlanta and American Cancer Society researcher. But that's not the whole story. Two recent studies, including one co-written by Chen, show larger thyroid tumors are being found at an increasing rate, too. And those can't be explained by more aggressive diagnosis alone, researchers say. "There is something else going on" to contribute to the 37,000 cases of thyroid cancer expected this year, Chen says. That's up from 18,000 in 2000.

During the Vietnam War, the hell that was soldiers' daily lives sometimes was complicated by their exposure to plastic explosives and their neurotoxic effects. Back home, munitions workers faced similar nightmares. Though not wandering the jungle in search of Viet Cong, workers on the front lines at the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant knew that at any moment they could be injured or die in an explosion. And those who were lucky or smart enough to survive could have ended up like Mary Ludlow. Ludlow, a Wisconsin resident, worked two stints at the plant in the late-1960s, totaling about six months. Ludlow left the plant a second time, and for good, when her then-husband decided to pursue a graduate degree at Iowa State University in Ames.

During the Vietnam War, the hell that was soldiers' daily lives sometimes was complicated by their exposure to plastic explosives and their neurotoxic effects. Back home, munitions workers faced similar nightmares. Though not wandering the jungle in search of Viet Cong, workers on the front lines at the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant knew that at any moment they could be injured or die in an explosion. And those who were lucky or smart enough to survive could have ended up like Mary Ludlow. Ludlow, a Wisconsin resident, worked two stints at the plant in the late-1960s, totaling about six months. Ludlow left the plant a second time, and for good, when her then-husband decided to pursue a graduate degree at Iowa State University in Ames.

During the Vietnam War, the hell that was soldiers' daily lives sometimes was complicated by their exposure to plastic explosives and their neurotoxic effects. Back home, munitions workers faced similar nightmares. Though not wandering the jungle in search of Viet Cong, workers on the front lines at the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant knew that at any moment they could be injured or die in an explosion. And those who were lucky or smart enough to survive could have ended up like Mary Ludlow. Ludlow, a Wisconsin resident, worked two stints at the plant in the late-1960s, totaling about six months. Ludlow left the plant a second time, and for good, when her then-husband decided to pursue a graduate degree at Iowa State University in Ames.

LAKES-based campaigners against nuclear energy have hailed an inquest verdict into a soldier's death as 'highly significant'. Last week a coroner's jury in the West Midlands found that depleted uranium caused the fatal colon cancer of Lance Corporal Stuart Dyson, who served in Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War. Marianne Birkby, for Radiation Free Lakeland, described it as an 'important verdict' for Cumbria, where new nuclear power plants are proposed. "It calls into doubt the validity of the argument of the International Committee on Radiological Protection that there is a 'safe dose' of radiation.

Childhood cancer survivors treated with total body or abdominal radiation may have an increased risk of diabetes, according to a report in the August 10/24 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. This correlation does not appear to be related to patients' body mass index or physical inactivity.

The Kumamoto District Court on Monday recognized 10 of 13 plaintiffs as suffering from radiation-related illnesses due to the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, dealing a 19th straight loss for the government in a series of similar suits filed across Japan. The remaining three plaintiffs have already been certified as suffering from atomic bomb-related diseases under the government's new criteria in place since April last year for giving such sufferers 137,000 yen monthly in special medical allowances. The court dismissed the plaintiffs' demand for compensation, but gave another boost to the hopes of aging and ailing atomic-bomb survivors for a settlement of the matter as soon as possible since a similar ruling in May by the Tokyo High Court caused the government to decide to come up with an answer before the Aug 6 and 9 anniversaries of the U.S. bombings of the two Japanese cities.

Depleted Uranium Gives Off Small, Safe Doses Of Radiation, Army Says PHOENIX -- New research is raising questions about the safety of a type of material used to make weapons deadlier and armor stronger. Depleted uranium, a byproduct of nuclear weapons, is widely used to coat tanks and shells, among other military equipment; however, some believe that the radiation it emits can harm people. Jerry Wheat was in the army during the first Gulf War when the vehicle he was riding in was hit by a shell from a U.S. tank.

Carla McCabe spent a decade building nuclear bombs at the sprawling Rocky Flats complex near Denver. When she developed a brain tumor and asked for help, federal officials told her that none of the toxic substances used at the top-secret bomb factory could have caused her cancer. Now, on the eighth anniversary of the federal program created to help sick nuclear weapons workers, the man who until recently was the program's top doctor says that McCabe, now 55, and many others like her are being improperly rejected.

The Labor Dept. announced today it had passed the $5 billion mark in compensation to claimants under the sick nuclear workers compensation program, coinciding with the 8th anniversary of DOL's administration of the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program. Despite those milestones, there continue to be complaints about the management of the program, as well as calls for legislative reform to make it easier for those made sick by the Cold War nuclear workplace to collect money and benefits. Worker advocates have raised continuing issues regarding adminstration of the federal program and still say the Labor Dept. is throwing roadblocks at claimants. Some advocates recently had a teleconference call with Labor official Rachel Leiton, but that reportedly did not resolve any ongoing issues.

Don McCarty has witnessed what many have only seen in photographs. The 85-year-old Navy veteran from Sparta was aboard the USS Albemarle during the first post-World War ll nuclear testing in the Bikini Islands. McCarty, a gunners mate, was on deck when an atomic bomb was detonated 7 miles away. "We didn't even hear it," said McCarty who was in Branson on Thursday for the 64th National Day of Atomic Remembrance.