[Congressional Bills 108th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[S. 2047 Introduced in Senate (IS)]







108th CONGRESS
  2d Session
                                S. 2047

To amend the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program 
 Act of 2000 to include certain former nuclear weapons program workers 
     in the Special Exposure Cohort under the compensation program 
                        established by that Act.


_______________________________________________________________________


                   IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES

                            February 2, 2004

   Mr. Bond introduced the following bill; which was read twice and 
  referred to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions

_______________________________________________________________________

                                 A BILL


 
To amend the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program 
 Act of 2000 to include certain former nuclear weapons program workers 
     in the Special Exposure Cohort under the compensation program 
                        established by that Act.

    Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the 
United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. FINDINGS.

    Congress finds that--
            (1) energy workers at the former Mallinkrodt facilities 
        (including the St. Louis downtown facility, the Weldon Springs 
        facility, and the Hematite facility) were exposed to levels of 
        radionuclides and radioactive materials that were much greater 
        than the current maximum allowable Federal standards;
            (2) the Mallinkrodt workers at the St. Louis site were 
        exposed to excessive levels of airborne uranium dust relative 
        to the standards in effect during the time, and many workers 
        were exposed to 200 times the preferred levels of exposure;
            (3)(A) the chief safety officer for the Atomic Energy 
        Commission during the Mallinkrodt-St. Louis operations 
        described the facility as 1 of the 2 worst plants with respect 
        to worker exposures;
            (B) workers were excreting in excess of a milligram of 
        uranium per day causing kidney damage; and
            (C) a recent epidemiological study found excess levels of 
        nephritis and kidney cancer from inhalation of uranium dusts;
            (4) the Department of Energy has admitted that those 
        workers were subjected to risks and had their health endangered 
        as a result of working with these highly radioactive materials;
            (5) the Department of Energy reported that workers at the 
        Weldon Springs feed materials plant handled plutonium and 
        recycled uranium, which are highly radioactive;
            (6) the National Institute of Occupational Safety and 
        Health admits that--
                    (A) the operations at the St. Louis downtown site 
                consisted of intense periods of processing extremely 
                high levels of radionuclides; and
                    (B) the Institute has virtually no personal 
                monitoring data for workers prior to 1948;
            (7) the National Institute of Occupational Safety and 
        Health has informed claimants and their survivors at those 3 
        sites that if they are not interviewed as a part of the dose 
        reconstruction process, it--
                    (A) would hinder the ability of the Institute to 
                conduct dose reconstruction for the claimant; and
                    (B) may result in a dose reconstruction that 
                incompletely or inaccurately estimates the radiation 
                dose to which the energy employee named in the claim 
                had been exposed;
            (8) the Department of Health and Human Services published 
        the first notice of proposed rulemaking concerning the Special 
        Exposure Cohort on June 25, 2002, and as of January 27, 2004, 
        the rule has yet to be finalized; and
            (9) many of those former workers have died while waiting 
        for the proposed rule to be finalized, including some claimants 
        who were waiting for dose reconstruction to be completed.

SEC. 2. DEFINITION OF MEMBER OF THE SPECIAL EXPOSURE COHORT.

    Section 3621(14) of the Energy Employees Occupational Illness 
Compensation Program Act of 2000 (42 U.S.C. 7384l(14)) is amended--
            (1) by redesignating subparagraph (C) as subparagraph (D); 
        and
            (2) by inserting after subparagraph (B) the following:
                    ``(C) The employee was so employed for a number of 
                work days aggregating at least 45 workdays at a 
                facility operated under contract to the Department of 
                Energy by Mallinkrodt Incorporated or its successors 
                (including the St. Louis downtown or `Destrahan' 
                facility during any of calendar years 1942 through 
                1958, the Weldon Springs feed materials plant facility 
                during any of calendar years 1958 through 1966, and the 
                Hematite facility during any of calendar years 1958 
                through 1969), and during the employment--
                            ``(i)(I) was monitored through the use of 
                        dosimetry badges for exposure at the plant of 
                        the external parts of an employee's body to 
                        radiation; or
                            ``(II) was monitored through the use of 
                        bioassays, in vivo monitoring, or breath 
                        samples for exposure at the plant to internal 
                        radiation; or
                            ``(ii) worked in a job that had exposures 
                        comparable to a job that is monitored, or 
                        should have been monitored, under standards of 
                        the Department of Energy in effect on the date 
                        of enactment of this subparagraph through the 
                        use of dosimetry badges for monitoring external 
                        radiation exposures, or bioassays, in vivo 
                        monitoring, or breath samples for internal 
                        radiation exposures, at a facility.''.
                                 <all>