The Ramazzini Institute
for Occupational and Environmental Health Research   

Who Are We?

The Amarillo Health Project

     The Cold War is said to have been “cold” because the war was limited to contained conflict. Armed forces on both sides took casualties, but not all the casualties wore uniforms and carried guns. Workers in the nuclear weapons industries on both sides of the Iron Curtain have paid, and continue to pay, a heavy price in death and destroyed family life.

     In just one country alone - the former German Democratic Republic [East Germany] - about 300,000 former uranium miners, many of whom were KGB prisoners of war or politics, experienced about 15,000 cases of silicosis. More than 6800 cases of lung cancer were recorded, of which 5131 cases were compensated by the East German government. The same conditions prevailed in the mines in what is now the Czech Republic, where in 1953 there were 11,816 KGB prisoners.

     Named after the small German city in the heart of the Ore Mountains where the uranium mines are located, Schneeberg lung disease [which for three quarters of a century was recognizable as cancer of the lung associated with ionizing radiation] “was commonly ascribed to a secondary effect of silicosis in an inbred population predisposed by hereditary susceptibility,” according to Richard Doll, Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford. The victims, not the radiation and quartz dust, were blamed.

     In the frenzy of war, chances are taken that would not be otherwise tolerated. But even under those conditions, it is fair to question the necessity of risks taken and whether those whose lives are being gambled are really told the truth about the risks they take. In any case, the perpetuation of risk after the war is over, and a failure to help the wounded are never tolerable. In Germany, as soon as the Wall came down, teams of doctors reinforced the health care system in place, medical care in specialized clinics was immediately available, the clean up of the communities laden with mine waste began, no one was left uninsured, and the process of paying workers or their families compensation for the economic effects of occupational disease began. The transition from war to peace was not as efficient in the United States, in part because of the massive size of a problem encompassing hundreds of mines and production facilities privately and publicly owned, and their communities, from the South Pacific and the Aleutians to the East Coast, and hundreds of thousands of workers and their families.

     It took the fall of the Iron Curtain in Berlin to uncover the extent of the tragedy among the German uranium miners. One reason was the destruction of the miners’ unions by the Nazis in the 1930s. In America, the tragedy of their counterparts in the mines and atom bomb “laboratories” was uncovered a little sooner. The mining unions - mostly members of the steelworkers’ and oil, chemical and atomic workers unions - successfully pressed for tighter standards to control ionizing radiation in the mines in 1972. After most of the mines closed, miners succeeded in bringing about passage of special compensation legislation. But it wasn’t until the Spring of 1987, when the leaders of the local unions and councils in the bomb factories themselves met in Denver, that concerted action was taken to strip off the veil of secrecy that has enveloped environmental conditions and consequent disease in their workplaces and communities.

     As this is being written, still another revelation is in the press, one of a continuous series on the Department of Energy uranium plant in Paducah, Kentucky, from the investigative reporting of Joby Warrick of the Washington Post. This is part of a flood of publicity on working and environmental conditions that has put the spotlight on plants in Amarillo, Texas; Rocky Flats, Colorado; Hanford, Washington; Oak Ridge, Tennessee and other facilities over more than a decade. The result is a positive climate for public understanding of not just another workplace problem, but of a collective moral responsibility.

     In this new climate, congressional leaders have reached agreement with the Administration on a lump sum settlement of $150,000 and medical benefits for the thousands of workers or their survivors who built nuclear weapons and became ill as a result.

     The local union leaders who met in Denver in the Spring of 1987 called upon their national organizations to take action. In September of that year , the Metal Trades and Industrial Union Departments of the AFL-CIO called a meeting of delegates from all local unions, including the Teamsters who were not then affiliates, to organize a DOE Workers Health Program. The first demand of the delegates was for immediate medical assistance by physicians not in the employ of the Department of Energy or its contractors. A clinic was organized by the Ohio AFL-CIO to care for workers in Ohio and Kentucky. The Industrial Union Department’s Workplace Health Fund assigned its occupational physician-nurse practitioner-health educator team to probe conditions at Rocky Flats and Hanford and to provide direct assistance where necessary. A successful law suit was brought on behalf of the unions in the nearby Fernald, Ohio plant to force DOE to provide these services. With the assistance of then Senator John Glenn and others in the Senate and House of Representatives, a law was passed, requiring the Department to provide medical surveillance for all DOE facilities. Most major DOE facilities now have such programs, but not the Pantex plant in Amarillo.

     Since DOE has not provided a complete, independent lifetime medical surveillance program for former and active workers at Pantex, through the Amarillo Health Project the Metal Trades Council has established its own program to provide urgent services not available to active and former workers and their families. With funds from the National Cancer Institute, Dr. Arthur Frank, a professor at the University of Texas Health Center at Tyler, and a member of the Board of The Ramazzini Institute, is establishing an independent early cancer detection center headquartered in Amarillo.

     At a community meeting June 29 in Amarillo, conducted by Dr. David Michaels, Assistant Secretary of Energy for Environmental Health, the need for this program was heard loud and clear from survivors such as Marta Brown, whose husband was a Pantex worker who died of cancer at age 56. She asked for a study of cancer among not only Pantex employees, but also of the people who live around the plant. That study is under way, but not by the Department of Energy.

     If a DOE medical surveillance program is established, the Project and DOE programs may be integrated. There is no contractor involvement in the Amarillo Health Project. Liaison with DOE is conducted through DOE headquarters in Washington and Germantown, MD, which has assisted in the development of the Project, including a 1998 probe of conditions by the Ramazzini Institute.

Personnel from the Metal Trades Council assigned to the Project are:

David Pompa, Task Force Chairperson

Don Shumaker, MTC Vice President and Internal Workers Compensation Contact

Sofia DelosSantos, Senior MTC Safety Officer

Ron Zerm, MTC Safety Officer

Frank George, Jr. is President and Chief Steward of the Amarillo MTC.

Beryllium Workers Medical Surveillance Program

     Positive changes have taken place within the Department itself over the past decade. The Environmental Health program has been radically reorganized. An Office of Occupational Medicine and Medical Surveillance has been established. Work on a more protective beryllium standard, stopped during the Cold War “in the interest of national defense” has been completed. A clinical test for beryllium dust sensitivity, which is a sentinel event or an early stage in the development of Chronic Beryllium Disease, and follow-up protocols were refined at the National Jewish Research Medical Center and evaluated by scientists at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The evaluation was monitored by the Workplace Health Fund in a cooperative arrangement that continues today through the Ramazzini Institute, since the Workplace Health Fund no longer exists. The test measures the proliferation of lymphocytes in the blood. It is not a genetic test.

     With encouragement of the beryllium industry, DOE has funded research for a genetic test for Chronic Beryllium Disease susceptibility at the University of Modena in Italy, University of Vermont and Los Alamos National Laboratory.

     There are unanswered questions about the genetic test developed through this research. Even among those who test positive, in the absence of significant levels of exposure to beryllium dust, Chronic Beryllium Disease may not appear!

     In any case, the Los Alamos scientists have questioned the use of a genetic test from an ethical perspective. The late Merrill Eisenbud, chief industry consultant on the issue, warned against the use of genetic tests until ethical, legal, and social protections are in place. A few DOE facility workers have been tested for purposes of research. A relatively larger group of workers from the major supplier of beryllium metal - Brush-Wellman Corporation - have had genetic tests for purposes of research.

     The lymphocyte proliferation and other tests are being used to screen workers in the Beryllium Workers Medical Surveillance Program conducted by the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education [ORISE] for DOE. Some workers who are currently employed and who now are exposed, or in the past may have been exposed to beryllium dust, and who have tested positive may be temporarily or permanently removed from their job. The conditions under which removal takes place, and future employment protection, are being negotiated by the Metal Trades Council and the contractor.

Watch this page of GEE! for more information on the Health Project, help in interpreting the results of environmental data, screening and clinical tests, and reports on how the new compensation program will be implemented.