Tomamhawk in the news last December...see last few paragraphs.
This is first I've seen of this.
James
Outrage at Oak Ridge
NINETEEN WORKERS WERE CONTAMINATED with radioactive waste in late December
while working at a Department of Energy (DOE) laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
The radioactive material, cesium-137, was first discovered at the end of the work day on
December 29, 1992. A pipe at the worksite was found dripping radioactive waste. The pipe had
been originally cut open during construction on December 23.
"These people were exposed over a six-day period before it was detected," says Jackie Kittrell, a
Knoxville attorney who represents whistleblowers at the Oak Ridge Laboratory. According to
Kittrell, "Cesium has a half-life of about 30 years. It probably won’t get out of the body of an
adult" within his or her lifetime. "The health effects probably won’t be known for another five or 10
years."
Technicians from the Oak Ridge lab discovered that the leak had contaminated 19 of the 28
workers on the site. Cesium was found in the homes of three of the workers and in the clothing and
cars of others.
According to Kittrell, the contaminated employees are carpenters who were working in a trench
when they were exposed to the pipe dripping cesium. Prior to working on the project, the
employees were told the area was clean of radioactivity. Most of the workers were employed at
Tomahawk Construction, a subcontractor employed on the site by M.K. Ferguson, the construction
contractor working for DOE. The leak came from the Analytical Chemistry Division, a laboratory
building run by Martin Marietta.
"If they had a health physicist person or any kind of monitor they would have been able to detect
that that was a hot pipe, but they didn’t because subcontractors operate under different safety rules
than contractors," Kittrell says. "A lot of workers feel that this is a real problem because DOE can
get the job done much cheaper and with less stringent safety precautions by hiring subcontractors."
- Ben Lilliston |
