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solomonstarnews.com - Compo unlikely for Bikini Islanders, fears lawyer
The lawyer acting for Bikini Islanders says there is little hope their case will go to the US Supreme Court as they seek compensation for the 23 US nuclear weapons tests carried on their atoll.
The Bikinians filed suit in the US Federal Court of Claims in 2006 after a Nuclear Claims Tribunal issued a 563 million US dollar damage award in their favour but did not have the money to pay it.
The Bikinians contend that the US Congress cannot take away their US Constitution Fifth Amendment protections for just compensation payments for
damage the nuclear tests did to their islands.
But the US Justice Department said in earlier court hearings that the US Congress provided a full and final settlement through a 150 million US dollar compensation fund in a Compact of Free Association approved by the US and Marshall Islands governments in 1986.
The Tribunal proved incapable of paying even one percent of the compensation.
The atoll is still uninhabited because of radiation contamination.--RNZI
Radiation victims' vigil at Skinner Plaza - KUAM.com-KUAM News: On Air. Online. On Demand.
The Pacific Association for Radiation Survivors will hold a candlelight vigil ceremony at Skinner Plaza in Hagatna tomorrow. On November 1, 1952, the first hydrogen bomb was detonated in the Marshall Islands and three days later, nuclear fallout contained high levels of radiation.
PARS President Robert Celestial says every year a vigil is held to pray for those who passed on as a result of radiation exposure and also push for the passage of H.R. 1630, which was introduced by Congresswoman Madeleine Bordallo back in March. Celestial said, "It's to amend the law to include Guam in the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act.
"In 2005, the National Research Council identified and reported to Congress that Guam and residents during that time period from 1946 through 1974 are eligible for this restitution."
The vigil begins at 6:30 tomorrow evening at the Skinner Plaza.
Hanford News: More Hanford workers could be compensated
Less than 10 percent of former Hanford construction workers who likely would qualify for compensation for illnesses have applied to a federal program, said a Building Trades National Medical Screening Program official.
Representatives of the program held a meeting in Pasco on Wednesday night to discuss the screening and a Department of Labor program that provides compensation for Hanford workers who developed illnesses because of exposure to radiation or hazardous chemicals at the nuclear reservation. Nearly 100 attended.
As many as 25,000 former Hanford building trades workers may have developed illnesses covered by the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program, said Knut Ringen, principal investigator for the building trades screening program. But he estimated that less than 10 percent of those have applied.
Special cohort needed for Hanford workers - Opinions | Tri-City Herald : Mid-Columbia news
We're not nuclear scientists or radiation experts, but we're willing to accept the recommendation from those who are -- especially after years of study.
Congress should approve the special exposure cohort for Hanford workers currently being recommended by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.
A special cohort would make automatic $150,000 in compensation and extend medical coverage to potentially hundreds of sick Hanford workers who were employed for at least 250 days from Oct. 1, 1943, through June 30, 1972.
In the case of deceased workers, surviving family may be eligible for the payment.
Advisory board recommends Special Exposure Cohort for Oak Ridge Hospital workers, 1950-59 | Frank Munger's Atomic City Underground | knoxnews.com
The Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health today recommended that Oak Ridge Hospital workers, 1950-59, be desigated a Special Exposure Cohort, NIOSH spokeswoman Shannon Bradford said.
The ruling is based on the likelihood they were exposed to chronic levels of radiation. The SEC status, if it stands, would make it easier for those workers with cancer to receive compensation under the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program.
The advisory board concurred with an earlier recommendation from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, and now it will be sent to the Secretary of Health and Human Services, who will make a recommendation to Congress, Bradford said. If Congress doesn't act within 30 days, the secretary's recommendation stands, she said.
Senator seeks more compensation for state nuclear energy workers | coshoctontribune.com | Coshocton Tribune
U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown unveiled legislation Tuesday that would extend occupational illness-related compensation and health benefits to hundreds of former employees at two Cold War-era nuclear facilities in Ohio.
The Ohio Democrat's proposal would extend a special designation to the Feed Materials Production Center in Fernald and the Piqua Organic Moderated Reactor in Piqua so that former workers suffering from certain forms of cancer would automatically qualify for compensation.
Under current law, compensation is paid only if there is evidence the cancer was likely caused by radiation exposure.
"Former energy workers battling cancer should not have to struggle to receive the benefits to which they are entitled," Brown said.
Board OKs expanded compensation for ill Hanford nuclear workers - Breaking News - Yahoo | Tri-City Herald : Mid-Columbia news
A compensation program for ill nuclear workers won key approval Tuesday to offer automatic $150,000 payments to potentially hundreds more Hanford workers or their survivors.
An advisory committee to the federal government meeting in New York voted unanimously to further ease compensation requirements for Hanford workers who may have developed any of a wide range of cancers due to radiation exposure on the job. Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of Health and Human Services, now is expected to recommend the eased rules, called a special exposure cohort, to Congress.
If Congress does not object, the special exposure cohort would be formed.
Under the special exposure cohort, automatic $150,000 compensation and medical coverage would be extended to any Hanford worker who was employed for at least 250 days from Oct. 1, 1943, through June 30, 1972. That's more inclusive than previous decisions to ease rules only for workers assigned to specific Hanford areas for certain of those years.
Radiation victims lose compensation
Court rules damages paid earlier 'adequate'
Twelve victims of radiation poisoning have lost their appeal for 12 million baht in compensation from an engineering and electrical equipment distributor over its reckless storage of radioactive materials.
Sonthaya: Right hand crippled SURAPOL PROMSAKA NA SAKOLNAKORN
The members of the group claimed Kamol Sukosol Electric Co Ltd was negligent when it stored radioactive materials not properly secured in its car park.
This allowed a cylinder of cobalt-60 - a radioactive isotope that can cause cancer - to be stolen from the company property.
But the Appeals Court yesterday ruled in the company's favour saying the 640,276 baht in compensation the Civil Court had earlier ordered Kamol Sukosol to pay was sufficient.
The Joplin Globe, Joplin, MO - Cold War-era nuclear workers recognized
An event in eastern Missouri will join other U.S. observances of the service of Cold War-era nuclear weapons workers.
Several hundred workers, or their survivors and friends, are expected to attend ceremonies Oct. 30 in Weldon Spring during the first National Day of Remembrance.
Congress dedicated the day to recognize the sacrifices of nuclear weapons and uranium workers from more than 300 U.S. facilities, many of them disabled or dead from exposure to radiation or other toxins.
Event organizer Denise Brock says $4 billion has been paid to workers or their survivors nationwide, including $200 million in Missouri, as federal compensation for the harm since 2000.
The event will include a tree dedication and wreath laying, as well as signups for free medical screenings.
Downwinders: Include Guam in law; Radiation survivors group meets | guampdn.com | Pacific Daily News
A group of island residents and members of the Pacific Association for Radiation Survivors met yesterday to discuss legislation that proposes to include Guam in the federal Radiation Exposure Compensation Act.
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The federal RECA law, passed in 1990, compensates people who have been diagnosed with specific cancers and chronic diseases that could have resulted from exposure to agents associated with nuclear weapons testing, according to a 2005 report published by the National Academy of Sciences' National Research Council.
The law covers exposure to nuclear tests carried out for more than 20 years during and after World War II. According to the report, both on-site participants of above-ground nuclear tests and "downwinders" in areas designated by RECA are eligible for compensation.
Areas of Nevada, Utah and Arizona are covered in the law as "Downwind Counties," the report states.
Apology sought for abuse at Fernald School - Waltham, MA - Wicked Local Waltham
In the dark past of the Fernald School for the disabled, the nation's oldest publicly funded facility for those with developmental disabilities, some children were subject to Cold War experiments including being fed radioactive cereal while other patients allegedly were tagged as "morons" even as tests showed them to be normal.
Now two Massachusetts lawmakers want the state to do right by the former residents of the controversial Fernald School, which opened in 1848 and is slated to closed next year.
State Rep. Thomas Sannicandro, D-Ashland, has filed a bill that would require the state to apologize for alleged civil rights violations among patients at the Waltham facility. And state Rep. Thomas Stanley, D-Waltham, has filed a bill calling for a formal investigation of the misclassification of patients there.
Both bills will be heard during a hearing Tuesday before the Joint Committee on Children, Families and Persons with Disabilities.
The Hawk Eye: Former IAAP worker hopes compensation denials come to end
Former IAAP worker hopes compensation denials come to end
John Rowe is learning the hard way that two out of three isn't enough.
The longtime Burlington resident has been denied compensation since 2003 from a federal program for former atomic energy workers.
While he still has one application pending -- for a brain tumor near his pituitary gland -- Rowe isn't optimistic that this time will be any different than before.
Rowe, 82, has been experiencing deja vu since his first denial on May 6, 2004.
The letters are always the same. The Department of Labor agrees he worked at the Iowa Ordnance Plant more than the requisite length of time and that he's a very sick man. But the department doesn't see a link between his illnesses and work on Line 1.
The Hawk Eye: Pantex plant site waiting for same status as IAAP
Many former atomic energy workers in southeast Iowa practically have to beg for compensation under the federal program specifically designed for them.
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They go months without a response from the Department of Labor that oversees the program, and yet are expected to get their replies sent back in record time. Some letters simply go unanswered by the district offices.
Then, they often wait years before finally being denied redress for protecting the country during the Cold War.
And the former workers in Amarillo, Texas, at the Pantex site would love to have it that easy.
"Why can't cumulative information be used to benefit other workers," said Sarah Ray, who is one of three people applying for a special exposure cohort for Pantex. "I don't get the feeling that they are truly creating a usable database. I think they're missing the boat."
News Articles: "All hope abandon ye who enter here"
"All hope abandon ye who enter here": The Unofficial Motto of the Office of Workers' Compensation Programs (OWCP)
I must confess that the above quote isn't really engraved over the entrances to all of the OWCP district offices – poetry buffs will realize that I borrowed this quote from Dante Alighieri, the great 14th century Italian poet who penned the "Divine Comedy" – but from my experience I think it would be a suitable warning to injured Federal workers as to how they are likely to be treated by the agency.
The Hawk Eye: Doctor: Plan unfairly rejects many
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 none of the toxic substances used at the top-secret bomb factory could have caused her cancer.
Now, eight years after the federal program was created to help sick nuclear weapons workers, the man who until recently was the program's top doctor says McCabe, 55, and many others like her are being improperly rejected.
The doctor, Eugene Schwartz, recently resigned and said many of the complaints workers, advocates and lawmakers have leveled at the controversial program are valid. For instance, Schwartz said he repeatedly warned the U.S. Department of Labor that it is ignoring established medical knowledge about the dangers of bomb work.
French Polynesian nuke test veterans stunned by French U-turn
The Moruroa e Tatou nuclear test veterans association in French Polynesia has expressed surprise that a fresh compensation ruling is being appealed by the French state.
This follows an undertaking by the French defence minister, Herve Morin, that in such matters the state would no longer go ahead with a challenge but accept court rulings.
According to Tahitipresse, the head of Moruroa e Tatou says he wonders if the minister had lied or just used deceptive language.
As the French compensation bill is to go to the French senate, the association has questioned the significantly lower compensation being considered for victims in French Polynesia over that offered in France.
The Associated Press: Fallout from nuclear tests leads to health crisis
Pius Henry fears his adopted government will kill him, that the United States won't live up to a health care obligation to people from Pacific islands where it tested nuclear bombs.
Henry, a diabetic from the Marshall Islands, has received free dialysis treatments three times a week for years, but the cash-strapped state of Hawaii has threatened to cut off him and others to save money.
Like thousands of legal migrants to Hawaii from independent Pacific nations, Henry believes the United States has a responsibility to provide health care to compensate for the radioactive fallout of 67 nuclear weapons tests from 1946 to 1958.
"I don't have any option. I'm asking the government to help us," Henry said. "They say we're like U.S. citizens, but then they don't treat us the same. It's really unfair."
Poisoned worker wins round in lawsuit - BostonHerald.com
A former Raytheon Co. worker who says she suffered beryllium poisoning while working at the defense contractor’s Waltham lab has won another round in her lawsuit.
A federal appeals court in Boston has remanded Suzanne Genereux’s lawsuit to the district court, but it upheld an earlier ruling that removed Raytheon from the dispute.
What About the Atomic Vets - Don Rittner - timesunion.com - Albany NY
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.
Ruling favors Santa Susana lab workers - LA Daily News
Dozens of workers diagnosed with cancer after their employment at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory may have more leverage in claiming federal compensation to help with their health care.
The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health first granted a special designation earlier this month for those assigned to the field lab's 270-acre Area IV, where much of the nuclear work was conducted. The designation applies to those who were exposed to radiation for at least 250 days, between Jan. 1, 1955 and Dec, 31, 1958.
On Wednesday, the federal agency broadened the designation to include those who worked at the field lab in 1959, the year of a partial nuclear meltdown at the site.
The federal action is the result of a efforts by Bonnie Klea of West Hills, who worked as a secretary for Rocketdyne in the 1960s. A survivor of bladder cancer, she compiled letters, press releases, news articles and documentaries about radioactive and chemical contamination at the site.
She delivered the petition in 2007, after learning that the Department of Labor had denied most of the claims for compensation filed by cancer-stricken workers under the 2000 Energy Employees Occupational Illness Program Act.
Of the 993 claims filed by Thursday with the Department of Labor, 249 had been denied, 164 had been approved and the rest are pending.
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