Westminster – Former Rocky Flats nuclear-weapons factory workers in droves – some leaning on walkers, some using respirators to breathe – testified into the night Wednesday, begging a visiting federal advisory panel to help them.
Grieving relatives of workers who have died of cancer cried as they spoke.
“I feel like I sacrificed my health, even my life, like the soldiers in Iraq are doing,” said Judy Padilla, 60, a plutonium handler who contracted breast cancer but had her applications for compensation denied.
“Our lives and peace of mind rest in your hands.”
Every member of Colorado’s congressional delegation weighed in on the workers’ behalf, urging the 11-member Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health to recommend a streamlined process to provide compensation.
A majority vote by the panel – which is scheduled to vote at noon today – could mean hundreds of former workers with cancer would no longer have to prove their ailments were work-related.
Laura Schultz, 49, another ex-worker battling cancer, said federal scientists charged with “reconstructing doses” of radiation that workers received ruled that it was unlikely that work caused her cancer.
Bureaucrats “have us beat. … They speak in babble,” she said, a respirator whirring at her feet. Ailing workers “don’t have an unlimited amount of time and a budget” like the federal labor and health officials running the government’s compensation program, she said.
Former worker Cliff Del Forge, 68, escorted his son, Douglas, 46, to the hearing. Both handled plutonium at Rocky Flats. Douglas, suffering from brain tumors, has trouble speaking after eight operations.
“My son’s illness was caused by his work,” Cliff Del Forge said. “He deserves to be compensated.”
Christine Von Feldt, 54, and her husband, Rick, 52, regretted they didn’t have the strength to attend the public hearing at the the Westin Westminster Hotel. Surgeons just removed her uterus and bladder in an effort to neutralize her cancer.
During the Cold War, “we had to do what we had to do. It was a good job. We knew there were risks,” Rick Von Feldt said. Now, he said, his wife should be treated with the dignity.
Rising from a wheelchair, Jerry Mobley, 60, told how he went bankrupt in 2003 from $86,000 in medical bills for skin cancer.
“I’m busted,” Mobley said. “I doubt I’ll see these benefits. I hope my wife won’t have to sell our house when I’m gone.”
Bob Carlson, 82, who had 2 feet of his colon removed because of cancer, said the problem at Rocky Flats was “accidents” such as fires in which plutonium was released and workers were exposed.
“What we have in our bodies is like a stick of dynamite that seems like it’s going to explode any time,” he said.
Most panelists wouldn’t say for certain how they’ll vote.
But panelist Phillip Schofield, a former nuclear plant worker suffering from cancer himself, was “somewhat sympathetic” to the workers’ plight.
