DENVER—State and federal officials are in a dispute over data that could determine whether some former workers at the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant are eligible for benefits if they develop certain cancers.
The Rocky Mountain News reported Monday that federal officials haven’t acted on information gathered by a state health department researcher that could make some of the workers automatically eligible.
The state researcher says the federal government doesn’t have the information, and won’t agree to the state’s conditions to review it. A federal official says his agency already has similar information, and that it can’t agree to the state’s conditions for seeing it.
Rocky Flats, about 15 miles northwest of Denver, made plutonium triggers for nuclear warheads. It was shut down in 1991 after a troubled history that included several fires.
After workers at Rocky Flats and other nuclear weapons plants reported they were developing cancer or other ailments because of their work, Congress created a program that made them eligible for special health benefits if they could prove that exposure to radiation likely caused the ailments.
Margaret Ruttenber, a state health department researcher, said she has information that shows which Rocky Flats workers were monitored for a particularly dangerous type of radiation—monitoring that would automatically qualify them for immediate care and compensation for certain cancers.
Ruttenber said the information came from a seven-year study of worker exposure to radiation at Rocky Flats that she helped lead.
Larry Elliot, director of Office of Compensation Analysis and Support at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, said a federal scientist has told him there are no significant differences between the state data and what the agency already has.
Ruttenber disputes that. She said NIOSH has known since June that the state has information that federal researchers don’t have.
“I’m starting to think they don’t want these records,” she said.
Sen.-elect Mark Udall, D-Colo., said he’s “very concerned” that federal agencies may have known about this information for several months.
Rep. Ed Perlmutter, D-Colo., whose district includes many former Rocky Flats workers, called the federal agency’s response “one more roadblock” preventing workers from getting help.
Ruttenber said the study gathered the data with the consent of Rocky Flats workers and under the condition that the information would be used for public health.
State attorneys say that allows the data to be given to federal officials to use in determining which workers are eligible for the program, but only if NIOSH agrees not to use it for anything else.
Elliot said he can’t guarantee the information would be used only to determine worker eligibility for health care. He said if NIOSH had the data, it would have to consider using it for other studies.
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Information from: Rocky Mountain News,
