Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health Denies Inclusion

The Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health (ABRWH) voted this week to deny awarding Special Exposure Cohort (SEC) status for claimants from the Rocky Flats, Golden, Colo., and Carborundum, Niagara Falls, NY.

In an 8 to 4 vote, the ABRWH voted to deny expanding the class for Rocky Flats workers from becoming a member of the Special Exposure Cohort.  The current class covers all workers through December 31, 1983.

The four members of the ABRWH who voted to expand the class had concerns that hundreds of boxes of documents have not been reviewed to determine if there are any records that could support the petitioners’ position.

The Chair of the Rocky Flats Work Group, Dr. David Kotelchuck, assured the ABRWH that once the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has the opportunity to review the documents and locate evidence that could support expanding the class, the board and petitioners will be notified.

The next step for NIOSH and ABRWH’s Rocky Flats Work Group will be to revisit the Rocky Flats site profile to ensure the methodologies to reconstruct dose for the claimants reflect the latest information NIOSH has in its possession.

The ABRWH unanimously agreed that NIOSH can reconstruct dose for the Carborundum facility for operational periods from June through September 1943 and between 1959-67 and for residual periods from 1943-58 and between 1968-76.  NIOSH determined that it can reconstruct dose using surrogate data.

Cold War Patriots will provide a more complete summary of the ABRWH’s meeting early next week.