KLAS-TV Channel 8 News Las VegasExclusive: Dying Atomic Workers Still Waiting For Help

Exclusive: Dying Atomic Workers Still Waiting For Help

The clock is ticking for thousands of former Nevada Test Site employees, many of whom are sick or dying because of exposure to radiation during the atomic testing program. Critics say the government is waiting for the workers to die so it doesn't have to compensate them. Now, there's a new weapon that can be used in the fight.

Patty Cook, daughter of test site worker, said, "My mom was proud to work out there. She caught a bus at 5:30 in the morning and came home at 6:30 at night for years and years."

Patty Cook's mother Irene worked for 20 years at the Nevada Test Site during a period when hundreds of atomic devices were exploded in underground tests. Irene wasn't directly involved in the testing program, but like tens of thousands of others at the nuclear range, she was routinely exposed to radiation. Many of those underground tests accidentally vented radiation into the air. On Irene's final day of work at the test site, the infamous Baneberry Test sent a gigantic cloud of radioactive dust into the sky.

Patty Cook said, "After a shot with leakage, they'd put them on a bus and send them to Mercury for an hour or so and she'd be walking back. She would even tell me, as a little girl, 'you know Patty, the guys were out there in the white suits cleaning up and we were walking across the rocks in our shoes.' And she was pretty concerned about that."

In 1995, after years of severe back pain, Patty's mom had some tests done and received the bad news -- terminal bone cancer that transformed itself into multiple myeloma. Patty Cook continued, "It metastasized into her lungs, into her breasts, and during her final days, all the way up into her brain."

Irene's death was long and painful, and tough on her caregiver as well. When Patty Cook learned in 2001 about the federal program that compensates atomic workers who develop radiation-related diseases, she applied. It took two years before she was allowed to speak to a person about the claim. It took another two years before she had a second conversation and learned the Department of Labor had messed up its evaluation of the case and had to start over. Eventually, Cook was told that her late mother didn't qualify for the program because she hadn't been exposed to enough radiation to cause cancer.

The government uses what's known as dose reconstruction studies to reach such conclusions, guestimating how much radiation might have been present 30 or 40 years prior, and how much a given worker might have encountered. Critics say dose reconstruction has been used as an imprecise bludgeon to deny benefits to thousands of people who did their jobs and became sick as a result.

Of the more than 3,200 claims filed by former test site workers in the past six years, a mere 297 have been approved. Fewer still have been paid. Ray Slaughter, who worked in the tunnels at the test site, is now suffering with two kinds of cancer and was told he has less than two years to live. The government told him it will take longer than that to even process his claim.

Ray Slaughter said, "It seems like they look for reasons not to compensate you instead of trying to help and give the benefit of the doubt. They take every single thing they can to try and stop it."

Senator Harry Reid and Congresswoman Shelley Berkley helped to get the compensation program through the Congress. Both are sickened by the bureaucratic foot dragging. In November, Reid appealed to President Bush to take action. Months later, there has been no response from the White House, so Reid is planning a new approach that will be announced next week.

He and the test site workers will have a new arrow in their quiver. A government funded study, completed in December and not yet made public, analyzed the dose reconstruction process as it applies to test site workers and found much of it to be quote, "not scientifically defensible since it almost certainly underestimates radiation exposures in several different ways."

Back in January, Patty Cook had one final meeting with the Department of Labor to consider her claim. She wanted to talk about dose reconstruction problems in her mom's case but was informed the topic was off limits. The I-Team accompanied her to the meeting but the hearing officer barred our camera from the office.

After the meeting, we asked Patty Cook how it went. She said, "When it's all said and done... not a chance."

Senator Reid's office has called for a special meeting of test site workers and their families. It will be held next Tuesday afternoon at the Painters' Union Hall in Henderson.

Nevada Test Site Workers Special Exposure Cohort Meeting
Date: Tuesday, Feb. 21
Time: 2:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Where: The Painters' Union
Address: 1701 Whitney Mesa Drive, Henderson, 89014
RSVP by: Friday, Feb. 17 at 702-388-5020

Email investigative reporter George Knapp at gknapp@klastv.com