EXPOSURES RANGE FROM RADIOACTIVE ELEMENTS TO ASBESTOS, SILICA, SOLVENTS
Posted by clforyou | 18 Nov, 2010Bush told HNN that all of his information has come “from the workers who worked there. They left documents in part of a storeroom . It was a block building.” Informed sources tell HNN that the paper contents of this storeroom have since been burned.
The building and trades interviewer has knowledge that the Huntington site steel sheet pile manufacturer received materials from all three gaseous diffusion plants --- Paducah, Oak Ridge and Portsmouth. “They took the nickel out of [materials received from these sites] and crushed it into a powder, then, it was returned to the three respective [diffusion plants.] and use in the uranium enrichment process,” Bush said.
At least one former HPP employee has told Bush (and HNN has conducted interviews too that lend credence to an allegation) “[workers] would take contaminated stuff out of that pilot plant and use it over in the specialties metal plant , also. Bush could not name the source due to Privacy Act restrictions, but the former worker told Bush, “the stuff was process here and used over in the special metals end of the plant so a lot of people all over sheet piles the [full] INCO plant were exposed too.”
(Editor’s Note: Bush stated that he has “no documentation” of the former workers allegations; however, HNN has also interviewed former workers who have made the same allegations about materials from the HPP/RPP being disbursed outside of that facility and thus mixed with other types of production.)
Normally, we do not interview in-plant (i.e. the non-DOE/AEP/AWE portion of the INCO venue) China sheet pile and get them examined . This guy was at the end of his rope and contacted one of the program administers, Sue Boone, in Seattle, Washington.” Boone had recommended that Bush get in contact with HNN.
In addition to interviewees from Huntington, the regional project from Portsmouth interviews formers workers at the Fernald plant, the Mound, Paducah , all Oak Ridge and Portsmouth employees.
TAKING HOT STUFF pzc 26 sheet pile HOME TO MOM AND THE KIDS
Reacting to some “pretty old people” at the Remembrance Ceremony in Piketon, Bush differentiated between , “a high rate of people dying of lung cancer --- and cancer period ---“ and the 90-year-old survivor who spoke at the ceremony. “He drove a cab [at the plant] so he must not have been out there too much. The people working in the control room they did not get as much [exposure]. Those that worked out on the line , they got [the largest] exposures. The bad part about that is these people used to drive to the parking gate, check in , wore ordinary work clothes, and wear the same clothes home. The wives and children were exposed almost as much as the workers. Yet they are not covered,” Bush explained. “That’s sad. We don’t know how many [family members] passed away that [contacted exposure] from worker’s taking it home with them.”
The building and trades medical representation related circumstances az sheet pile where former atomic employees asked, “Can I have that pile of old sheet metal out there. I’m building a barn. Or I’ll put it on my roof.” But the “pile” of metal was radioactively contaminated. “All of this stuff is hot,” yet he recalled a Jackson, Ohio scrap dealer receiving 400 tons of radioactive scrap.
“They are also contaminated so how can the federal government keep on doing this. People that work at the [yards] are the same as average folks that worked at the Piketon plant,” Bush explained. “Looks like they would qualify for the program too.”
Asked about the radiation impacting neighborhoods surrounding these atomic plants, Bush said, “It’s in the drinking water. The ground water. It’s in the air. It’s on their automobiles. It’s in their garden.”
Speaking of wildlife seen by others in Piketon, he described “a deer with horns on one side” from the compound at Piketon or “a rabbit with five legs. I haven’t seen them, but that’s what workers have told me. There are a lot of deformed animals in that compound out there [in Piketon]. I hear about things like that most every time I interview a person.”
Bush, spent 33 years as a fsp sheet pile boilermaker (18 in the office as union business manager) and never worked at the Piketon plant. He worked at atomic power plants and at the Nickel plant in Huntington. After taking the outreach position due to his familiarity with construction processes, he stressed the unfairness and inequities in the compensation decision process, too.
“This guy applied for [compensation] for Prostate Cancer [acquired in Piketon]. I got him talking to the ombudsman in Washington, D.C. to try to get something straightened out. This has been going on for years. They also have larsen piling leukemia , yet there is no compensation for that., but they sent him a medical card for his lung problems. He even alluded to “fired” workers “still on the payroll” because “they know too much.”
“I don’t understand a lot of it,” he concluded with a sense of bureaucratic disgust.












