Ill former nuclear workers question why Mound records were buried

[The Straight Story]

Ill former nuclear workers question why Mound records were buried


DAYTON, Ohio (AP) -- Former nuclear weapons workers have questioned why the federal government buried records that they say could help determine if exposure to radiation and other industrial toxins made them sick, a newspaper reported.

About 400 boxes of records from the Mound nuclear weapons plant in Miamisburg were buried in 2005 at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. The records, which tested positive for radioactive contamination, were declared a health threat and had little overall value, officials with the U.S. Department of Energy said.

"I find it stunning," Richard Miller, an analyst for the Government Accountability Project, a Washington-based watchdog group, told the Dayton Daily News for a story published Sunday. Miller said the government should exhume the records, if possible.

About 700 former workers or their survivors have filed 1,143 cases with a federal atomic worker compensation program, claiming toxins from the plant caused cancer and other illnesses. Compensation totaling $21.4 million has been granted in 149 cases so far.

Energy Department spokeswoman Megan Barnett said the records were not pertinent to worker health and no rules were broken. She said documentation shows the records were lab notebooks, scientific records, nonpersonnel X-ray film, accounting files and records of weapons components and production assembly

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