USA Today 9-6-00 Poisonedofl{ers Toxic exposure poisoned places kept secret as for the thousands who lived - pact of nuclear weapons work The U.S. government secretly and still live - near the factories. done at private facilities in the ·At a time when the nation is re­ 1940s and '50s. Reporters visited hired hundreds of private aSSessing the worker ills and eco­ archives and former contracting logical damage wrought by large, sites in 10 states, interviewing companies during the 1940s government-owned nuclear weap­ scores of former employees, neigh­ ons plants, the record of the private bors and government officials. and '50s to process huge companies that did the work be­ Key findings: fore those facilities were built has ~ Beginning with the develop­ volumes of nuclear weapons had little scrutiny. ment of the first atomic bombs Most of the contracting sites during World War II, the govern­ . · ed material, were in the industrial belt: through ment secretly hired about 300 pri­ New England, New York, New jer­ vate companies to process and pro­ POJS9D leaving a sey and Pennsylvania, around the duce material used in nuclear Great Lakes and down the Ohio weapons production. At least a wo.-.<ers legacy of and Mississippi river valleys. They third of them handled hundreds. poisoned places poisoned were in big cities such as Detroit, thousands or even millions of 8l Cleveland, Chicago and St. Louis. pounds of radioactive and toxic By Peter Eisler, USA TODAY WOrkers and And they were in smaller commu­ material; .often without the equip­ nities, such as Lockport, N.Y., Car­ ment orknowledge to protect the negie, Pa., and joliet, Ill. Some did health and safety of workers or contaminated communities only minor work for the weapons nearby communities. prosram. but dozens of private fa­ The contracting wound down in that lingers to this day. cilities handled large quantities of the mid-1950s as government facil­ radioactive and toxic material. ities were built to take over most From mom-and-pop machi.ne shC!~s. to big-name che~­ 'These places just fell off the weapons-building operations - a ical firms, private manufactunng ~acilit1es .across the nat~on map," says Dan Guttman, former move spurred partly by hazards at were quietly converted to the r!sky busm~ss of handling director of the President's Advisory contracting sites. tons of uranium, thorium, polornum, beryllium and other Committee on Human Radiation ~ The government regularly radioactive and toxic substances, Few of _the contractors Experiments, set up in 1994 to in:.. documented worker health risks at were prepared for the hazards of thelf government- vestigate revelations that govern­ many of the private facilities doing sponsored missions. · . ment-funded scientists exposed weapons work, producing highly Thousands of workers were exposed to dangerou~ le~els unknowing subjects to danger<_:Jus classified reports that detailed ra­ of radiation, often hundreds of time~ ~tronger than t:Pe. hm-:­ isotopes in secret Cold War studies. Cliation exposure rates hundreds of its of the time. Dozens of commurntles were. contamm~t­ "People were put at considerable times above its safety standards. ed, their air, ground and water fouled by toXIc and radio- risk. It appears (the government) The Institute for Energy and En­ active waste. ' . knew full well that (safety) stan­ vironmental Research, hired by The risks were kept hidden. In some cases, they pave re- dards. we~ being violated, but USA TODAY to provide an expert mained so. ··. , there's been no effort to maintain review of old radiation data on AUSA TODAY investigation found, that tne gover~ment s contact with these people (and) three contracting operations, esti­ look at the effects," says Guttman, a mates that workers in the riskiest reliance on. a vast network of p. ri..vat·e· ·.·.. __ ls and 1,. shops to build America's early n4ct~ar·.··IMn... ·-i@t:H~.. ·~. ~.·"'.mil.·, gr~ve : lawyer and weapons program jobs had a 40% chance of dying health and environmental conseque(\ , efil\ 0ffi9als •i watchdog who returned to private from cancer - an increase of 200% knew of severe hazards to the comparu . ~y~e~ :and practice after the committee fin­ over the general population - as surrounding neighborhoods, but reports detailing the ished ·its work in 1995. ''There's no well as higher odds for respiratory problems were classified and locked away. · legitimate reason for this neglect." and kidney ills. But there's no tell­ The full story of the secret contractipg e!IQrt has never USA TODAY reviewed 100,000 ing how many, if any, workers have been told. Many of the companie~ that w~re involved.~ave pages of government records, gotten sick or died from their ex­ been forgotten, the impact of their operations unexal!lme~ many recently declassified and posures; they've gotten virtually for half a century. Yet their history catiie~ -pro~ound Impli­ never before subject to public re­ no medical study. cations f()f the thousands of people they employed, as well view. to assess the scope and im- 11 - Toxic con't ... Thousands of workers were put at a 'considerable risl<' tilation .... We did what we could to protect (workers). The radio­ active waste, we didn't think much about it People didn't (fully) un­ derstand the risks~" .. 'We'll continue tO be aggressive' Energy secretary says u.s. is committed to cleanup ..,·'' ' ·. ·"·i<\';;;..··<.,... :. ; ', · ~rgy Secretary Bill Richardson, who took office in A~ 1998, w~ .'briefed on USA TODAY's in­ vestigatiotfof.the health and environmental record of private corjlpapies rnred ~the 1940~ and ·s~s to pro­ dl,i.ce ~~process J:a(i4>active and toXIc matenal for the goyernflltl"-f~ P,qQ¢aJ: weapons progr~. llere ctte Srii'tie uf lili responses dunng a telephone interview Tuesday with USA TODAY reporter Peter Ei~ler: . · Q; It seems that a lot of these old contracting sites have been forgotten over the decades since they wrapped up tltelr work: Is that so? :A: Solp~'of ~~ese;private .sites have falle~ off the map. And tt's un:portant that m the not-too-distant fu­ tUre the government/look at their potential hazards an,d find .wa~ ..to ~· responsible to the communities and the worl,<ers. Metal dust: A metal-rolling mill similar to those used at Simonds. lbe Q; What sort of steps do you think are neces­ ventilator hood atop the machine removed dust; for years at Simonds, sary to address the health and environmental leg­ work was done on radioactive materials using unventilated mills. acies of these places? A: Over the years, both the government and the .,. Dozens of companies doing spite haVing evidence to the con-: contractors were not' candid with workers and the weapons work contaminated the trary. Surviving · employees stilt public about potential contamiriation as well as clean­ air, soil and water with toxic and have not been ·told of their risl<s, up. We need to find ways to reconstruct and preserve radioactive waste. Studies done at though screening and early treat­ tne hi~ry of. some of these sites. If _vve find historic the time documented some opera­ ment could boost their odds for si~stha.tneeci t(} be cleaned up, I believe the govern- , tions pumping hundreds of pounds surv'iving · soine illnesses they met}fiS obliga~d to do ju~t that. (And) it is _time we of uranium dust into the sky each might face as a result of their work. pay (workers) if they are sick because of their work month and others dumping thou­ Likewise, communities were left ,.!; < sands of pounds of solid and liquid unaware of toxic and radioactive Q; This actmhustration has been the first to ac­ wastes on the ground or into waste spilling from behind the in­ ~edge .that the .nuclear weapons program creeks, rivers and sewers. nocuous facades of local business­ c:aU$ed. a lot .of illnesses among workers. Now Federal officials sometimes en­ es. The secrecy that shrouded the there'sJegislation to provide compensation to dorsed such practices as cheap, weapons program's contracting still some of dioSe people. Do you think employees at easy ways to get rid of hazardous masks residual contamination at the private sites should be included? byproducts that in many cases left some sites. A: We'll continue to be aggressive, whether at fed­ contamination that persists today. "It was a different time, the Cold eral or private sites. As with the workers' healtl:l. there's War WAs on," says Arthur Piccot, ' . beeri no effort to assess whether 81, a health and safety moriitor Q; What about the environmental damage at the hazards made anyone ill. with the weapons program in the some of these places? .,. Both the governm~nt ~nd.ex­ late '40s and '50s. A: Cleaning up the environmental legacy of the Cold ecutives at the companies It hrred Producing weapons "w.;~S the War is a massive task. We have the largest cleanup for weapons work hid the health priority, period," he says. "A lot of program in the world, with a budget of over $6 billion and environmental problems. these places. were modified (for a year, to focus on some truly urgent problems. But Federal officials misled workers. weapons work) in a hurry. There that doesn't mean we should forget about the past. It insisting their jobs were ~afe de- might be a hole in the roof for ven- will take some time (to address problems at private sites), but we have a responsibility to clean them up. Toxic con't •.. ' ' ' ·Q; The government' never has released any sort · o( comprehensive .list of all the private ~ites.