03.24.04

Cantwell Extremely Troubled by Reports of Increasing Risks and Lack of Regard for Health of Hanford Workers

WASHINGTON, D.C . - U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) is sickened by reports of increasing incidents of Hanford workers being exposed to tank vapors. Today the Government Accountability Project released information on ten more exposures that occurred last week. Cantwell is renewing her call for oversight hearings on worker health and safety at Department of Energy (DOE) cleanup sites.

Below are Cantwell's remarks:

"Reports of an intensifying pattern of tank vapor exposures at the Hanford site are extremely troubling.

"Out of respect for the last generation of workers put in harm's way, the federal government must do more to protect the health of today's Hanford workers. The federal government cannot make the same mistakes again.

"We need to ensure Hanford's Cold War veterans receive the compensation and medical treatment they deserve. I will continue to press my case for a separate hearing on worker health and safety issues at DOE cleanup sites such as Hanford.

"We don't yet know why these incidents are occurring at the Hanford tank farms, but we certainly need to do everything possible to ensure we've learned the lessons of the past when it comes to the health and safety risks that workers face at DOE sites.

"In 1999, then-Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson declared that we had entered a 'new era' in the treatment of the nuclear weapons workers who helped this nation win the Cold War. But to think that today, during the cleanup process, we could be creating a new generation of sick workers turns that notion on its head."

Next week, the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, on which Cantwell serves, will hold an oversight hearing on the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act – legislation passed in 2000, designed to compensate workers that fell ill as a result of their work at DOE sites during nuclear production.