The Bush administration has proposed rules to help sick Cold War-era nuclear weapons workers get help through state workers’ compensation programs, but critics say the regulations fall short of what’s needed and rely too heavily on state standards.
The draft regulations are designed to help workers who were exposed to toxic substances, such as harsh chemicals, while employed by contractors at Energy Department facilities around the country.
Those workers were not given direct assistance in a compensation bill passed last year that provided medical care and $150,000 to sick workers exposed to cancer-causing radiation and silica or beryllium.
But the bill did instruct the Energy Department to help workers suffering from toxic exposures file claims under state compensation systems. That reversed a decades-old policy in which the agency fought such claims.
If a medical panel says a worker did get sick that way, and the Energy Department agrees, the agency has to help the worker file the claim and can direct its contractors not to contest it.
But worker advocates say they are upset the draft regulations do not set a federal standard for determining which workers should qualify for compensation because of job-related sicknesses. Instead, the regulations defer to worker compensation laws in each state.
David Michaels, an assistant secretary at the Energy Department under the Clinton administration who helped craft the law, said workers’ compensation laws vary by state and often have high burdens of proof and strict statutes of limitations.
That causes problems for people with slow-developing diseases and for those who have trouble gathering evidence showing the sickness was work-related, Michaels said.
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JWThompson@tribune.com
