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Editorial: One standard, please Workers deserve equal protection against exposure Wednesday, December 15, 1999
The announcement by the federal government of tougher controls on beryllium exposure doesn't help the hundreds of people who have been diagnosed with chronic beryllium disease. But the new standards should make federal weapons plants safer places in the future, and that's obviously a step in the right direction.
Admitting that workers have for years been exposed to unsafe levels, the U.S. Department of Energy is to set a standard 10 times more stringent than that currently in place. The existing standard was instituted in 1949.
The new standard will apply only to employees working under federal contract at weapons plants. However, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration sets standards for all other workers and should waste no time following DOE's lead and enacting the same tougher standards. OSHA has acknowledged that the existing 2 micrograms of beryllium per cubic meter of air appears to be "too high to prevent chronic beryllium disease." So there's no point in delay.
It is unconscionable that OSHA would permit workers in the plants under its purview to be exposed to higher levels of the potentially fatal beryllium dust than at plants under the auspices of the Energy Department. One standard for all. That's the only right way.
Although much remains to be done to protect workers who are still employed in the nuclear weapons industry from beryllium disease, the progress has been considerable since the Block News Alliance series "Deadly Alliance." The six installments were written earlier this year by reporter Sam Roe at the Toledo Blade, sister publication of the Post-Gazette, and detailed the exposure of workers to unsafe levels of the potentially deadly dust. The Post-Gazette published the articles in late March and early April.
With pressure mounting in Washington in the wake of the series' publication, legislation has been proposed to compensate workers for lost wages and for medical care, and to compensate families of lost workers. It deserves prompt passage.
Rarely has there been a clearer case of workers who are so obviously deserving of assistance and compensation for what they have suffered.
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