September 07, 2001 - 23:11 MDT

THE WONDERING JEW

It'll Fizzle

Just reading the newspapers and guessing a bit.

Beryllium in the news again with the PC spin of course.

Just in the effort to make a long story a little shorter it seems that two courts have gone against the workers incapacitated by the inhalation of beryllium dust.

"A judge in Tennessee says the U.S. government had the right to mislead nuclear plant workers about the safety of beryllium, because, (caps mine) IT NEEDED THE MATERIAL TO PRODUCE NUCLEAR WEAPONS." (What kind of she hit is this ? ? parenthetical mine again ) The preceeding from an article by Ann Imse a Rocky Mountain News staff writer. Also she says, "On Wednesday (Sept. 5) Jefferson County (Colorado) District Judge Frank Plaut denied a motion for a new trial in the case of the first four Rocky Flats plaintiffs and their spouses. They lost their case against the nation's only beryllium producer, Brush Wellman Inc. of Cleveland in June."

It seems that inhalation of an invisible amount of beryllium causes a wasting lung ailment in a small ( parenthetical comment mine(small my a__, not to those affected it isn't small)percentage of workers.

So there they are in a Catch 22, no luck suing the producer and the government refuses to own up to its responsibility, saying it had the right to smoke screen.

Who was it who pretty well went down the tubes over Asbestos ? ? ? ? Mansville ? I think that only a small percentage of workers and / or people exposed to asbestos fibers are hyper sensitive to exposure to it. Both my brother in law and I, over the years were exposed to it in the work we did. In the yearly outages in the places we worked asbestos lagging would be torn from the boiler walls and pipes to perform the necessary maintenance work on the heretofore covered things. At times, many of them, we existed in a white haze of asbestos dust.

Yet those who were hyper sensitive inhaled their own death warrant. Now there is a big hoo haw about asbestos -- but dips__t is being done for the Rocky Flats workers ailing because of beryllium dust inhalation and I think that there have been many lives ruined at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal by exposure to various poisonous materials used in the production of poison gas (Yeah, guess because our defense effort required it ?) and then later by the production of insecticide when production of poison gas was halted.

Out at Rocky Mountain Arsenal it has been found that the plume of Arsenal contaminated water has gone off grounds into residential areas. Ground water on the west side of the Arsenal is still being monitered and probably will be forever or maybe a day or two less. Not too long ago small sarin gas bomblet components were found in the scrap cleanup out there.

Seems like our government has the right of Eminent Screwing of our workers, just BECAUSE ! ! ! !

Why in the hell when it was a known fact all this stuff was bad didn't the government blow some of OUR tax money to try to determine who was and was not hypersensitive to any of this stuff? And keep them in some other line of work.

Seems that I remember that some government employees in Washington DC were secretly fed LSD to observe its effect on people. Secretly dammit !

I would guess that down the road when the government asks for people to work in hazardous jobs, well, I 'spect It'll Fizzle . . . . . .

Aside from tonights rant, there is a new 'Burb for those of us who admit to being "Senior Citizens." Check out: http://www.btinternet.com/~john. bailey/autumnn/autumn.html

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