Two Democrats from Washington state’s congressional delegation, Rep. Adam Smith and Sen. Patty Murray, are proposing legislation to make it easier for certain workers at the Energy Department’s Hanford Site and other nuclear cleanup jobs to qualify for federal benefits.
The Seattle Times reported Wednesday the two lawmakers were proposing companion bills in the House and Senate to create a presumption of occupational disease for workers who used defective respirators that might have failed to protect them from toxic chemicals at nuclear remediation sites.
Representatives for the lawmakers could not be reached early Thursday morning.
On Wednesday, Smith proposed H.R. 7852, a bill to establish a presumption of occupational disease for certain employees at DOE’s Radioactive Waste Management Complex, “to refine the definition of compensable illnesses” and provide additional research. The House bill was referred to the House Judiciary, Education and Labor, and Energy and Commerce committees, according to a notice on Smith’s website. No summary of the bill was yet available online.
The corresponding Murray bill was also filed Wednesday and will be sent to the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee.
In March, the Times reported that leaky or poorly-fitting respirators used by workers at the Hanford Site might have contributed to serious health problems, such as seizures. In April, a DOE spokesperson said the reported respirator problems during demolition of the Plutonium Finishing Plant raised in the article concern a period between 2012 and 2016, and there is no ongoing review of the matter.
The Seattle Times has said about 560 workers for contractor CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation during the time period in question received respirators modified in such a way to make them ill-fitting or potentially ineffective in protecting them from toxic airborne fumes.
The lawmakers have a very limited amount of time to push this bill through before the end of the current Congress, particularly with measures ranging from government funding to the COVID-19 pandemic competing for attention during an election year.
