A worker drills for uranium in Church Rock Mine, New Mexico, circa 1980. (photo: Post '71 Uranium Workers Committee)
Uranium
Mine and Mill Workers Are Dying, and Nobody Will Take Responsibility
15 February 16
In the Southwest, poisoned uranium workers are still seeking
justice
Women who worked in
the mines and mills also bore the risk of reproductive disorders and babies
with birth defects. “[Supervisors] told me … as long as I could do the job,
there was no reason to worry about my baby,” says Linda Evers, 57. Both of her
children had birth defects. Her daughter was born without hips.
I spent a week
interviewing former uranium workers (those who worked in the mines and the
mills and, sometimes, both) and their families in the towns of Grants and
Church Rock, N.M.: ground zero for uranium mining from the mid-1950s until the
early 1980s. Years, sometimes decades, after laboring in the mines and mills,
workers exhibit diseases associated with uranium exposure. The federal
government, under a program called the Radiation
Exposure Compensation Act (RECA),
has paid more than $750 million in restitution to uranium workers on nearly
8,000 claims. But in order to receive compensation, workers have to have been employed before
1972—the year the federal government stopped purchasing uranium for its
nuclear arms build-up. The workers I spoke with are part of a group of
thousands who worked in uranium mines or mills after December 31, 1971, and
have diseases linked to uranium exposure, but, so far, cannot get compensation
from RECA.
Spouses of former
workers also suffer health effects, even though they may have never set foot in
a mine or mill. The Post ’71 Uranium
Workers Committee, an advocacy organization cofounded by Linda Evers,
surveyed 421 wives of uranium workers and found that 40 percent reported
miscarriages, stillbirths or children with birth defects. One vector of
contamination may have been laundry brought home from the mines. Cipriano
Lucero, 61, worked in the Anaconda mill, where uranium was processed into
yellowcake, a toxic substance. “[His clothes] were stinky and yellow and no
matter how much bleach, they would never come out, they were still yellow,”
says his wife, Liz, adding, “I would wash his clothes with our clothes.”
Liz was diagnosed
with tumors in her ovaries when she was 28 and had to have a hysterectomy. She
says the doctor told her it was uranium-related. Liz and Cipriano cofounded the
Post ’71 Uranium Workers Committee with Evers.
So who’s to
blame?
Uranium mining has
long been known to be dangerous work. As early as 1546, in Schneeberg, Germany,
it was noted that large numbers of uranium miners were dying from lung disease.
The first scientific report linking uranium mining and lung disease was
published in Germany in 1879, and that disease was shown in 1913 to be lung
cancer. More scientific articles in the 1930s and 1940s seemed to indicate that
radon and “radon daughters,” byproducts of uranium decay, were the primary
cause.
But, driven by the
Cold War push for nuclear arms, uranium mining continued unchecked with “little
attention… paid to the health of uranium miners,” according
to a Department of Labor historian.
In 1950, an
Irish-Navajo sheep herder named Paddy Martinez found a bright yellow rock of
uranium ore near Haystack, N.M. That set off a mining boom in the Four Corners
(where New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and Colorado meet), providing sorely needed
jobs.
“[The men] wanted to
provide for their families, and the [mining] companies came in and said, ‘Hey,
you guys are gonna make good money, have good benefits,’ ” says Liz Lucero.
When she and Cipriano first got married, in 1976, he was working in a gas
station for $3.85/hour. He took a job at the Anaconda mill the next year in
order to get benefits and more money; about, he figures, $6 an hour. “Had to,”
he says. “Had to support our family.”
Companies also lured
workers with patriotism. “Every day, they told us we were doing our part for
the Cold War effort,” says Linda Evers. “They’d tell us, ‘We won the Cold War
because of you guys.’”
As the boom took
off, Grants declared itself “The Uranium Capital of the World.”
Workers like Evers
say they didn’t understand the dangers of uranium exposure, in part because the
diseases take years to manifest. “When I was working, no one had been getting
sick,” says Evers.
During the 1960s,
Navajos working in uranium mines, few of whom smoked cigarettes, started
experiencing high rates of lung cancer. Advocates and workers pressured the
federal government—the sole purchaser of uranium from 1948 until 1971—for
remedies. In 1979, Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) introduced the first bill to compensate
uranium workers and others for diseases attributable to radiation exposure, but
it wasn’t until 1990 that RECA became law. With RECA, the government recognized
its responsibility for the harm done to uranium miners and apologized “on
behalf of the nation.” A 2000 bill expanded RECA to cover uranium mill workers,
ore transporters and above-ground miners. Workers with diseases such as lung
cancer, pulmonary fibrosis and silicosis are eligible for $100,000 in
restitution. But the act only covers workers who were employed before 1972.
The Four Corners
mining boom continued, however, thanks to nuclear power. It didn’t slow until
1979, when a glut of uranium on the world market led to a steep price drop, and
layoffs began. By 1989, the last conventional uranium mine in New Mexico had
closed.
All of the dozen
former workers interviewed for this article worked after 1971 and are therefore
denied RECA benefits. Tommy Reed, who worked in the mines until 1983 and has a
constant cough, as well as skin and lung problems, finds this untenable. “We
did the same work, have the same diseases, but we’re not covered,” he says.
“What’s the rationale behind that?”
According to Chris
Shuey, who directs the Uranium Impact Assessment Study at the Southwest
Research and Information Center in Albuquerque, the government reasoned its
responsibility ended in 1971 when it stopped purchasing uranium. Many Congress
members, he adds, believe the new standards on radiation exposure passed in
1969 protected uranium workers. Yet, post-1971 workers are still dying.
Something didn’t work.
A failure to
regulate
Health and safety
protections for uranium workers were, for many years, spotty at best and
negligent at worst. The
Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Mines (BOM), established in 1910 to reduce
accidents, had little regulatory authority and was also tasked with “mineral
resource development.” State laws were piecemeal: In 1958, for example, New
Mexico instituted a policy to “clear all areas” of mines that exceeded safe
levels of radon, but “there was limited enforcement,” according
to a 2002 National Institutes of Health paper by Doug Brugge and Rob Goble.
Federal
responsibility for mine safety was reshuffled twice in the 1970s. The Mining
Enforcement and Safety Administration (MESA)
took over for the BOM in 1973 due to concerns about conflicts of interest. In
1978, the Department of Labor’s Mine Safety
and Health Administration (MSHA)
replaced MESA as part of the sweeping reforms of the Federal Mine Safety and
Health Act. MSHA also assumed responsibility for uranium mills.
MSHA’s motto is
“Protecting Miners’ Safety and Health Since 1978.” Former uranium workers
interviewed—all of whom worked at mines and mills from the mid-1970s through
1982 or 1983— don’t believe it did a very good job.
Radon is “one of the
most potent carcinogens known,” according to Dr. Gordon Edwards, president of
the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility. But during the 1970s,
government regulations didn’t mandate regular federal inspections to measure
radon levels at uranium mines. Neither MSHA nor the National Institute for
Occupational Health and Safety (which inherited some of the BOM's
responsibilities) could provide In These Times with confirmation that the
government conducted inspections for radon levels at that time. Companies were
supposed to self-monitor, and if they detected high levels of radon, implement
safety measures.
By 1981, MSHA was
supposed to be checking radon levels at the mines annually. Several workers
remember inspections, but told In These Times that when inspectors were coming,
supervisors had workers barricade the unsafe areas. When the inspectors left,
the barricades came down and the workers went back in. At mills, “[inspectors]
never got out of the trucks,” says Evers. “Maybe they did, but I never saw
them.”
One effective way to
reduce exposure to radon is through ventilation. All underground mines are
supposed to be well-ventilated, and according to 1973 guidelines, uranium mines
specifically had to have “an adequate quantity of good-quality air” in working
areas so as to keep radon levels below the threshold. But in a survey of
1,302 post-1971 workers conducted by the Post ’71 Uranium Workers Committee in
2009, only 14 percent said their work areas had adequate ventilation; 36
percent said no and almost half answered “sometimes.”
The ventilation
guidelines didn’t extend to uranium mills, despite exposure hazards there as
well. At mills, uranium ore is refined into yellowcake, which is 80 percent to
90 percent uranium oxide. When inhaled, it can become embedded in the lungs,
increasing the risk of pulmonary fibrosis, which can be fatal. When ingested,
it can damage the kidneys.
Cipriano Lucero
worked in uranium mills from 1977 to 1982. He has pulmonary fibrosis, and one
of his kidneys failed when he was 48, necessitating a transplant. He uses a
continuous positive pressure airway machine at night and uses an oxygen tank
during the day. Asked whether there was proper ventilation in the mills where
he worked, Lucero simply replies, “Not really.” Linda Evers says the dust was
so bad in mills that she sometimes couldn’t see. “They had exhaust fans,” she
says, “but it wasn’t anything different than an oversized box fan. They just
moved [the dust] around.
“We were allowed one
dust mask a month, a paper dust mask,” she continues. “After one shift, they
were clogged, so we just wore bandanas, or nothing.”
Lucero agrees: “We
had masks but they were useless … paper masks only. Sometimes you wouldn’t even
have a mask, breathing in all that dust.” Workers often coughed up black soot.
Given the dangers of
working with uranium, it would seem that companies should have provided
extensive training on radiation hazards—but they did so at their own
discretion. “We had a class, lasted about an hour or two,” said Lucero. “Mostly
about first aid, if you hurt yourself, how to wrap it.” They didn’t talk about
radiation. Larry King, who worked in the mines, mainly as a surveyor, for eight
years, said he had only one safety meeting and that was when he started work.
“No one told us of
the hazards of radiation, uranium or radon,” he says. Seventy-nine percent of
the workers questioned in the Post ’71 survey believed that safety
measures—including information and equipment—were inadequate.
Surrounded
Church Rock is
located in the Navajo Nation, 55 miles west of Grants. Nestled in red rock
hills, the town gets its name from a formation that looks like a steeple. Local
Navajo were drawn to the mines, like the residents of Grants, because of the
well-paying jobs. Because Navajo miners often worked within walking distance of
their homes, their risk of exposure was heightened.
Larry King, who is
Navajo, lives about five miles from the entrance to Church Rock Mine, off a
gravel road just past a hand-painted “Old Church Rock Mine Road” sign. In
addition to the overwhelming likelihood of uranium exposure at work in the
mine, there’s a strong chance he was, and may still be, exposed at home. His
house is a short distance from where, on July 16, 1979, a tailings pond dam
broke, releasing 93 million gallons of radioactive water. It was, by volume,
the largest single release of radioactivity in the United States.
King is a
sturdy-looking 58-year-old, but he suffers from respiratory problems that leave
him fatigued and short of breath when he works on his property, which includes
13 cattle. “I used to do quite a bit of work several years ago, and now I’m
limited,” he says.
Five miles north of
where King lives is the home of Edith Hood, also a Navajo former mine worker.
She worked as a probe technician in the Kerr McGee mine for a total of six
years. A quiet 64-year-old, she’s still energetic despite having been diagnosed
with lymphoma in 2006. Her front yard is less than half a mile from the
abandoned mine where she once worked. Just a short distance away is a buried
tailings pile—mine waste that contains uranium and may still be giving off
radon. “Since we live and work here,” she says, “it’s a double whammy.”
Waiting
In 2015, bills to
amend RECA to include post-1971 workers were introduced in the House and
Senate, spearheaded by three Democratic New Mexico legislators: Sens. Tom Udall
and Martin Heinrich and Rep. Ben Ray Luján.
It’s the fourth
attempt since 2000. Keith Killian, a private attorney in Grand Junction, Colo.,
who is fighting to get compensation for post-1971 workers, sees reason for
“guarded” optimism. “There are bipartisan sponsors,” he says. “That’s really
good. In the past we didn’t have a lot of Republicans interested.”
Still, no bill has
received a hearing and nothing is scheduled. Neither Senate Judiciary Committee
Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), ranking member Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) nor House
Judiciary Committee Chair Bob Goodlatte responded to requests for comment.
Cipriano Lucero, a
soft-spoken man of few words, did what he was told when he worked in the mills.
He, like many other uranium workers, said if he complained about working
conditions, he risked losing his job. One of his tasks, washing uranium off air
filters, required him to stand in foot-deep water containing uranium runoff.
Doctors, he says, told him radiation exposure had made his left leg brittle; it
broke three times and eventually had to be amputated. Now he has a prosthesis,
with a painting of the Virgin of Guadalupe on it. Lucero has trouble walking
and usually uses a cane or, when he gets too tired, a motorized wheelchair.
“Some days are
terrible,” he says. “I can barely get out of bed. I just wonder how I’m gonna
die…suffocate or whatever.” He’s only 61.
“It’s haunting us,”
says Jerry Sanchez, who worked as both a miner and miller. “If you worked
there, you got it coming. If you don’t have it, it’s coming.”
Grants is the
quintessential boom town, post-boom. Now, the best jobs are in the prisons.
Along its main street, a stretch of Route 66, there are almost as many
weed-infested lots as there are occupied buildings. A half-mile stretch contains
six payday loan companies—four in one block. A few large neon signs beckon
people to buildings that no longer exist. An abandoned gas station has a large
sign advertising Marlboro for $1.69 a pack. Lucero says that in its prime,
Grants had “lots and lots of people. … The restaurants were full all the time,
people [were] buying cars and houses.” But the streets are mostly deserted now.
Asked if his friends and family have moved away, he answers, “No. Most of them
died because of cancer.”
C 2015 Reader Supported News
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The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
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