Comment: Modern uranium mining is not much different from old days, still dusty and the workers do not wear mask. Uranium companies do not follow regulations, cannot even monitor radon reports. So the nuke pushers are death pushers! No to uranium mining and milling, do not believe the fairy tales the uranium corps are pushing!
June 6, 2011 in
But as others before him have learned, compensation is elusive
Becky Kramer The Spokesman-Review
Chico Corral couldn’t get away from the dust. After the daily blasting, yellow-brown grit hung in the air at the Midnite Mine, an open-pit uranium mine on the Spokane Indian Reservation where Corral worked without a mask or respirator. Later, he breathed in dust during the years he worked at a uranium mill.
“We sucked all that into our lungs,” he said.
His family couldn’t escape the dust, either.
It coated his work boots and coveralls. His daughter, Rachael Corral Henry, remembers running to meet her dad when he came home from work. “It was like he’d been in a sandstorm,” she recalled.
In his living room, in the blue recliner where he spends most of his days, Corral pauses to cough, spitting phlegm into an empty milk carton.
Now 79, Corral’s lungs show signs of scarring. Minor exertion leaves him short of breath. He believes his lung problems resulted from the two decades he spent in the uranium industry.
For the past three years, Corral has tried to get compensation through the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, or RECA. The federal legislation allows former uranium workers to collect up to $100,000 for health problems that arose from their work.
From the 1940s through the 1960s, the United States conducted nearly 200 atmospheric nuclear weapons tests. Domestically mined and milled uranium was essential for the effort.
The act covers uranium miners, millers and ore truck drivers who worked in the industry through 1971. People who lived downwind of Nevada’s atomic test site are also covered.
In a 2009 letter, the U.S. Department of Labor acknowledged that Corral had been diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, but it said he didn’t provide evidence that linked the disease to his work history.
Efforts to document Corral’s work history and exposure levels have turned into endless rounds of paperwork for him and volunteer advocate Sandra Belvail. They’ve had to track down decades-old payroll records and medical reports.
Corral was never seen by a doctor specializing in industrial exposure, which makes his claim more difficult, said Belvail, a retired nurse practitioner.
As she’s worked on Corral’s claim, she’s been shuffled among 15 employees at the U.S. Department of Labor and U.S. Department of Justice, which administer the program. When they tried to reschedule a hearing this spring, Corral received a letter telling him to call a nonworking phone number.
Former co-workers who started the claims process gave up.
Read more:http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2011/jun/06/these-guys-will-be-gone/
