Y-12 Petitioners Submit White Paper Supporting Petition 250

Once a petition has been submitted to add a group of workers at a nuclear weapons facility to the Special Exposure Cohort (SEC) Petition and qualified by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) for a review by the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, the petitioner’s work is not over.  They are part of the deliberative process between NIOSH, the Board, and the Board’s support contractor, Sanford Cohen and Associates.  Petitioners have the opportunity to offer rebuttal evidence and arguments to the Board.

Steve Hicks, former employee of the Y-12 plant, submitted a SEC petition to cover all workers employed from January 1, 1977 to December 31, 1994.  Kathy Vinson, a surviving child, submitted a similar petition but NIOSH did not qualify for it.

Mr. Hicks and Ms. Vinson collaborated and developed this well-researched paper, Analysis of Working Conditions, Worker Exposures and Monitoring, 1980 – 1994, to support the position that NIOSH cannot reconstruct dose with sufficient accuracy for those Y-12 workers.  They have submitted this document to the NIOSH docket for this meeting and asked that it be distributed to all Board members prior to the meeting.

Please click here to read the document in its entirety.