For years, atomic workers struggled with illnesses in SC. Finally, feds pledge help

After 14 years of inaction, a federal health advisory board has taken steps to help potentially thousands of sick nuclear workers and their families pay medical bills and debts associated with illnesses the employees contracted after working at the Savannah River Site.

The Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health agreed last week to make it easier for subcontractors who worked at the Aiken-area weapons complex before 1991 to receive compensation for illnesses they developed.

Local construction workers are among the ailing subcontractors who stand to gain compensation, which in some cases could provide them and their families with as much as $400,000, say attorneys who argued in favor of easing restrictions on compensation for illnesses.

It is not known yet how many workers and families would be eligible for compensation under the new rules, but a federal meeting transcript shows at least 37,000 construction employees may have worked at the Savannah River Site from the 1950s through the early 2000s.

Last Thursday’s recommendation by the radiation health advisory board must be approved by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, but the panel’s action is a major milestone in a 14-year-long effort to gain compensation for suffering SRS workers and their families.

“I’m tickled that we finally got this pushed through,’’ said Brad Clawson, a radiation health advisory board member who supported the worker benefits. “This has been a long, long process.’’

Those familiar with the process predict the board’s recommendation will gain federal approval because the government has rarely turned down advisory board recommendations similar to the one made for SRS subcontractors.

Terrie Barrie, who works with an advocacy group for sick nuclear weapons plant workers, called the board’s decision “absolutely fabulous.’’ But Barrie also said “it’s unconscionable that it has been delayed this long.’’

If approved by the Health and Human Services agency, subcontractors who worked at SRS for at least 250 days from 1973-1990 would not have to go through what’s called a dose reconstruction, a process of trying to show whether radiation they were exposed to caused cancer,

Instead, workers with cancer and their families would automatically be eligible for benefits without trying to match illnesses to the dose of radiation . If a subcontractor has died of cancer, his or her family would be eligible for benefits.

The government already has given people who worked at SRS from 1953-72 approval to receive compensation without having to go through the sometimes laborious dose reconstruction process. That approval came in 2012.

Many records needed to show how much radiation people were exposed to are incomplete or were never kept, making it harder to prove cases for benefits under the federal compensation program Congress adopted in 2000.

The sick workers program provides compensation to nuclear weapons workers who have certain types of cancer and other illnesses that resulted from working at federal atomic sites. It also provides medical benefits.

“This is going to provide the compensation and medical care, and home health care, to these workers that to some degree devoted their lives to us, to support the Cold War effort,’’ said Warren Johnson, a South Carolina attorney who has advocated for the sick employees. “It finally gives them what Congress intended to give them 21 years ago.’’

Since lawyers filed a request in 2007 to ease restrictions that they said were preventing workers from gaining compensation, the federal government has been embroiled in a series of internal disagreements that delayed a decision until last week.

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health had offered multiple proposals that it said could estimate a person’s radiation dose, but those plans never proved accurate, said Knut Ringen, a doctor and health consultant who has followed the process for years.

Ringen and others said the government should not have continued to take such a hard line when it became apparent it was not possible for NIOSH to determine their dose accurately.

“There were many people both with the government and on the advisory board who were more intent on proving they were the smartest people in the room, rather than thinking about their responsibility,’’ Ringen said.

As the dispute remained unresolved, ailing workers and their families faced mounting legal bills and debt because of cancers they say resulted from work at SRS.

Workers sometimes have waited for years before getting compensation. Other times, they have learned they do not qualify because it can’t be shown through medical records their illnesses were mostly caused by work at SRS..

In one case recently featured by The State, a Barnwell County woman seeking compensation for her husband’s death had been denied so many times that she sued the federal government. Her husband died in 2006 after working at SRS.

The government finally relented last month, awarding $275,000 in compensation. Her son said it should not have taken a lawsuit to gain benefits that his mother, Carolyn Bolen, was entitled to under the 2000 energy workers law.

The federal government launched the program in 2000 to compensate people who got cancer and other illnesses from working at federal nuclear weapons complexes during the Cold War, which lasted from just after World War II until 1991.

It was intended to be a worker-friendly program that was weighted toward helping weapons site employees, rather than challenging their claims for benefits, Ringen and Johnson said. The State and the McClatchy Co. highlighted problems with the program in a 2015 series called “Irradiated.’’

In South Carolina, workers at SRS are among those affected. The Savannah River Site, a 310-square-mile complex near the Georgia border, was a key cog in the nation’s nuclear weapons production program.

Rashaun Roberts, who is the advisory board’s designated staff member, was not available for comment last week or this week. A NIOSH spokeswoman did not respond to questions.

The U.S. Department of Labor, which administers much of the program, has said the sick workers compensation effort has been generally successful across the country, providing benefits to tens of thousands of people.

But not everyone shares that view.

Ringen said he’s not sure what prompted the radiation health board to finally grant benefits to subcontractors who worked at SRS from 1973 to 1990. But he said he thinks the matter went on so long that “too many of the board members finally got embarrassed’’ into approving the easier path to compensation.

Last week’s board recommendation extends to subcontractors whose medical records have been particularly hard to locate, but it does not include people who worked for the main SRS contractors, such as Westinghouse or Dupont, or to Department of Energy employees, Johnson and co-counsel Josh Fester said.

Johnson said his law office will seek to gain compensation for those workers as well.

Meanwhile, Johnson and Fester were working this week to identify all of the ex-subcontractors and their families who could receive benefits by expanding the eligibility period to 1990.

The radiation health board’s decision is bittersweet for Johnson’s law firm. The original request to declare more workers eligible for compensation had been pushed by western North Carolina attorney Bob Warren late in 2007.

In 2012, he and Johnson succeeded in gaining federal approval for employees who worked at SRS from 1953-72 to receive compensation. But it took until this past Thursday for the radiation health panel to include subcontractors who worked at SRS through 1990.

Warren, a co-counsel with Johnson and lawyer Josh Fester, died in 2020 still awaiting the decision rendered last week.

“Bob’s perseverance is what got us to this point,’’Johnson said.