A gift from Argonne
http://www.dailysouthtown.com/southtown/dsnews/051nd1.htm
November 5, 2000

By Lisa Pevtzow
Health and Environment Writer

Where Marietta O'Hara worked, the half-life of a dog was three days.It was wartime, she had three brothers overseas and she labored on an experimental weapons program so covert she didn't know for nearly a year what it was.

For many years, O'Hara thought she had a good job, a patriotic one that helped end the war early and brought her brothers home safely.

And so she thought until first one, then another and ultimately all six of her children were born with horrible deformities, one without a forehead, another without an anus, a third with an esophagus that began at the lungs and ended in a blind pouch.

"Medical people would see what she gave birth to and say 'My God, where have you been and what have you been exposed to?' " said O'Hara's husband, Robert.

For one and a half years, O'Hara, now 79, played a small part in the Manhattan Project. Now she believes her patriotic work devastated an entire generation of her family.

Others who helped build the first atomic bomb in University of Chicago labs during the 1940s tell similar stories of wartime secrecy and government high-handedness.

They speak of handling substances whose dangers were never disclosed, of radioactive spills never properly cleaned up, of medical test results withheld.

And now, desperate for answers, some fear they will never see a dime from a new federal program compensating nuclear arms workers made sick in service to their country.

"They are waiting for us to die," said George O'Keeffe, a retired Manhattan Project metallurgist who fabricated casing for the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

At a minimum, the ailing workers, many of whom already are in their 80s, won't see any money for at least a year. Because of a deliberately written hole in the law, it has been left up to the next president to determine how high to put the bar of evidence for cancer-ridden workers to prove their claims.

But whether a direct causal link between exposure and cancer will be required for compensation largely depends on who's elected president this Tuesday.

An administration official who did not want his name to be used said it is likely, if Democrat Al Gore is elected president, anyone with certain cancers known to be linked to radiation exposure who worked at a DOE plant would be eligible for compensation. If George W. Bush, a Republican, gets the nod, more direct proof may be required between exposure to radiation and disease.

For nearly a year on the third floor of an old Hyde Park brewery termed Site B, O'Hara, then a 23-year-old University of Chicago graduate, bombarded small animals with x-rays and waited for them to die.

At the time, O'Hara, who now lives in Chicago's Beverly neighborhood, didn't think much about what safety precautions were taken, if any. Her supervisors never told her, nor did they let her in on how much radiation her body absorbed.

"Right from the beginning the government knew and kept it purposefully secret," said Larry Kelman, a retired metallurgist whose lungs were ruined by the beryllium dust he inhaled while working on the Manhattan Project.

"They felt (taking safety precautions) would slow down the whole job of making the bomb," Kelman said. "There was a war on and they reasoned they would save more people in the long run than would be hurt this way."

Government officials also worried that had word gotten around among the Manhattan Project workers that they were working with dangerous materials with little or no protection, many would quit and it would be difficult to find others to take their places, Kelman said.

Site B, also the site of Manhattan Project machine shop, was filthy with beryllium, an extremely light and strong metal used to make key bomb components, several former workers remembered.

It hung suspended in the air and coated work stations like smooth layers of flour, recalled O'Keeffe, the retired metallurgist living in Westmont. He saw droplets of spilled mercury glinting through floor boards.

During the 1930s, European physicians documented the poisoning of workers who heated or ground the metal. Breathing in beryllium particles and vapor can scar the lungs and ultimately kill those most susceptible. But most American health experts, influenced by industry officials, downplayed the risks until the late 1940s.

O'Keeffe remembered once reaching to touch a film of beryllium shavings on a counter.

A safety expert shouted " 'Don't touch it, you jerk' " O'Keeffe said. "And I said 'You're the jerk, not me, for not telling us. We've been touching this until we look like we're in a flour mill.' "

After the war, O'Keeffe lost a kidney to cancer, which he bitterly refers to as "a gift from Argonne."

"I've been exposed to so many carcinogens and radiation," O'Keeffe said. "I know I'm loaded with it."

Under the new law, sick nuclear arms workers or their heirs would be given lump sum payments of $150,000, and workers would be entitled to lifetime medical care for diseases caused by beryllium and radiation exposure.

For victims of beryllium disease, the criteria for compensation is seemingly straightforward. Under the law, all they have to show is that they have been diagnosed with the condition and worked at a DOE facility or one owned by a beryllium vendor where they could have inhaled dust or vapor of the heavy metal.

For workers with cancer, which can show up as much as 30 years after exposure, they must prove the chance they received cancer from working with beryllium or radioactive material is at least as great as other potential causes, such as the environment or genetics.

And since there is no test that traces cancer to radiation or beryllium exposure, the guidelines for determining that link — as well as estimating how much radiation each worker received in the case of inadequate or incomplete work records - will be determined by the next president in conjunction with an independent advisory board he will appoint.

DOE spokesman Brian Quirke said there is a tremendous amount of statistical data from Hiroshima and Nagasaki that predicts, based on the amount of radiation, whether a person will develop cancer.

Also, the law as it is written seems to leave out O'Hara since she has neither beryllium disease, cancer nor silicosis. The only evidence of her exposure may be the six children she gave birth to and the two others who miscarried.

O'Hara said that when she sought compensation from Argonne for her exposure, government doctors told her the birth defects were not linked to radiation.

But Dr. Noushin Izadifar, who specializes in radiation oncology at Loyola University Medical Center, said radiation "definitely" could have caused the O'Hara children's birth defects even years after she was exposed.

"If that exposure is high enough to cause genetic damage she can not only have miscarriages and birth defects, but even their offspring have a high risk of cancer and problems related to genetics," Izadifar said.

Izadifar said the yearly limit for radiation exposure is 5 REM. O'Hara said she regularly blasted animals with 800 REM.

Until a claims process is set up — and that won't happen until a new president is seated — people who think they may be eligible can do nothing but register with a DOE hotline.

Some former workers and their families are skeptical that Argonne National Laboratory, which grew out of the Manhattan Project, will release the work and health records necessary to prove their claims. They worry that confidential records of spills and accidents now locked up in the bowels of the facility will not be declassified in time to help them.

Also, Kelman said so many people have died undiagnosed from beryllium disease - which is often mislabeled adult asthma or sarcoidosis, a lung condition of unknown origin - that it may be difficult if not impossible for their families set the record straight.

"I've been disappointed so often that I still feel something will happen to this," Kelman said.

In the 1970s, O'Keeffe was working with plutonium in Building 350 at Argonne when the power shut off, which released a small amount of plutonium from a sealed box.

"Some of the material got spilled on the floors," O'Keeffe said.

O'Keeffe said he asked lab officials for the results of tests on his urine and feces. He wanted to know whether they showed evidence of contamination.

"They said 'You wouldn't understand it,' " O'Keeffe said. "I said that I'd get someone to explain them. But I never got them and no one else got them either.

"They never cared."

Jim Meneghini, an Oak Forest resident, remembers his father, John, a quality control inspector at Argonne, coming home one day in the 1970s and telling his wife there had been an accident.

"This sticks out in my mind," Meneghini said. "I remember him coming home and saying he had been exposed. Right after that he contracted lymphoma. Four years later he died."

Meneghini said his father was a traditional man, proud of his work ethic and proud of his work.

"Today, people are aware of safety concerns," he said. "Then, he was proud to do his job and wanted to do the best job he could."

Like O'Keeffe, the children of Al Hryn, a Manhattan Project machinist who died of cancer last year, were unsuccessful in their attempts to obtain medical records from Argonne, they said.

Two of his children said they repeatedly called Argonne and wrote, but they received no response.

"Why won't Argonne release medical records to the families?" Al Hryn Jr. said. "We want answers and we aren't getting answers.

"The proof lies with them."

Argonne spokeswoman Donna Jones Pelkie explained that lab policy dictates medical records can be released only to employees, not their heirs.

Hryn started working at Site B as a high school shop student in 1943, machining beryllium. Two years later, he was assigned to a special Army engineer detachment and sent to Los Alamos for the final development of the A-bomb. In 1946, he was transferred back to the Manhattan Project in Chicago, which by then was known as Argonne National Laboratory.

The workers wore no protective clothing, no masks and wore their work clothes home for their wives to wash. On Saturdays, some brought their children to work, who played in the beryllium dust.

In 1973, Hryn was let go, and in 1992 he was diagnosed with lung cancer.

His daughter, Nancy Bishop, said the dismissal crushed him and he always wondered whether he was sent home after government doctors found signs his health was deteriorating. It was not until 1986 that Hryn learned his name was on a confidential 1953 list of 192 Argonne workers heavily exposed to beryllium.

"He was shocked and we all were shocked," said his son, Al Jr. "They tested everyone monthly and they wouldn't tell everyone what they were testing for."

Nor did Argonne ever tell him - not while he worked there and not afterward - that beryllium was potentially fatal.

In 1993, when Hryn's cancerous right lung was removed, the family asked the surgeon to have it tested for evidence it was damaged by beryllium. The surgeon dismissed them and their request.

The cancer eventually spread to his colon, the cause listed on his death certificate.

Now, Hryn's family believes his death was related to his exposure to beryllium. They wonder what proof, short of exhuming him and testing his other lung, they can offer the government.

"I want his name" out there as someone who died from service to his country, Bishop said. "He deserves to be heard even if he's not here. But how to prove it?"

By now, just about everyone Hryn drove to work with is dead, said Al Jr.

"Hopefully, people still alive will get some help, but the government is dragging its feet, dragging its feet."

Nuclear arms workers who believe they may have been exposed to radiation or beryllium may register with the federal Department of the Environment through its toll free hotline at (877) 447-9756 or on the Internet at
http://tis.eh.doe.gov/benefits/