May. 04, 2007 - 22:11 MDT

EXPECTED

Although I don't write much about current events, it doesn't mean that I don't read the news. I do, quite often much to my disgust at the smarmy peccadillos engaged in by public figures who should know better.

But I have been following the events at Rocky Flats here. I have a nephew who worked there and an ex of one of our children who also worked there. And as well I have followed things to do with safety for years.

When the kettle started to boil out there and the folks running the place admitted fault and paid a whopping fine for things known to have happened, I figured that many folks who are now ailing would end up behind the eight ball and it seems that is exactly where they are.

There have been various meetings, which called for more meetings, feet being dragged and excuses bandied about. But the article in today's Rocky Mountain News made my heart sink. I shall quote portions of the article by Laura Frank and Ann Imse:

"Former Rocky Flats nuclear weapons workers were left furious and tearful Thursday when a federal advisory board decided their cancers would not automatically qualilfy them for aid."

"The Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health recommended that only certain workers who were exposed to one kind of radiation from 1952 to 1958 be grandfathered into a program providing medical care and compensation.

Three other groups will get further consideration by the board next month on whether they should also get automatic approval for the aid proogram because their records are too poor to prove that radiation on the job caused their illnesses."

"The Board which is appointed by the president, officially delayed a decision on the remaining workers with the 22 types of cancer recognized as caused by radiation. But it signaled that most who started work after 1970 would BE OUT OF LUCK.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

That is the short shot of the article. From what I have read in previous articles the percentage of cancer in workers at Rocky Flats is much greater by far than that type of cancers are in the general public. But the government quibbles, delays and in essence is saying that people who worked clean-up of the facility are not entitled to coverage for cancer caused by exposure to radioactivity existing there during teardown.

Other facilities across our country were missing records and things were scrambled to the extent that reliability was so highly dubious that blanket coverage was handed out to workers exposed to radiation. Seems matter of fact to me that if exposure to radiation on workers in any other state got blanket coverage to workers with cancer and other ailments typical to that type of work, that Rocky Flats workers were due the same courtesy. Yet the striving for fairness has been going on for years, while every body in so-called power is waving the exemption from blame blanket over the smoldering bodies of people dying from Cold War Syndrome.

Sure it is our tax money that will go (if ever) to those laid low, but better that than support a pre-emptive war and Congressional boon-doggles, of which there are many.

But veterans coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan who are wounded and disabled aren't being treated so well either.

I truly hope things change for the better, but right now it does seem that the hope is a bit dim, it is going much as I EXPECTED

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