Navajo Uranium Miners Seek Relief In Next Virus Package

By Emma Whitford

Bruce Chavez thinks that he is likely to die if he contracts the novel coronavirus. Not only is he vulnerable because of his age, but the Navajo elder has pulmonary fibrosis — a lung disease he says he contracted working in uranium mines in the 1960s.

“If I get it I know I won’t be able to survive it,” Chavez, 79, told Law360 in Navajo, his daughter translating. “All I have to stick to is my faith. I have been praying a lot lately.”

Retired uranium miner and Navajo elder Bruce Chavez, 79, is at greater risk of COVID-19 because of his pulmonary fibrosis.

Chavez is one of thousands of retired uranium workers in the southwestern United States, many of them Navajo, who — along with their families — have faced serious health challenges.

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