Path to benefits eased for some; other ex-Linde workers excluded
WASHINGTON — Former Linde Ceramics workers exposed to radiation since 1954 may stand a greater chance of winning federal compensation as a result of a recent administrative ruling, but those who worked there from 1947 to 1953 are not so lucky.
The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health has decided to review a petition calling for those who worked at Linde from 1954 to 2006 to be considered a “special exposure cohort,” which would ease their path to benefits.
But the agency rejected a petition calling for similar status for workers from those earlier years, when the Town of Tonawanda facility actually was doing Cold War nuclear work.
In a letter to Antoinette Bonsignore, a University at Buffalo law school graduate helping the retired workers, the agency said she had not proved that the petition from the workers in the earlier years deserved to be reviewed.
“None of the four bases you selected for your petition was sufficiently supported,” Larry J. Elliott, director of the Office of Compensation Analysis and Support at the agency, said in the letter.
That decision prompted a complaint from Sens. Charles E. Schumer and Hillary Rodham Clinton, both D-N. Y. With Rep. Louise M. Slaughter, D-Fairport, they said in a letter to the agency that both petitions should have been allowed to move forward.
“It is incomprehensible to us that workers from 1947 [to] 1953 who were exposed to dangerous radiation during key operational phases of the Linde site have been denied review of their [special exposure cohort] petition and yet workers who worked after this time from 1954 until 2006 were granted review,” the letter said.
Bonsignore asked the agency for an administrative review of the decision, which is now under way, said Chris Ellison, a health communications specialist at NIOSH.
The retired workers want to be included in a special exposure cohort because that saves them the more difficult step of going through complex dose reconstructions aimed at determining their radiation exposure.
Already, 118 former Linde workers have won compensation under the federal program aimed at helping workers exposed to radiation as part of Cold War projects, and Bonsignore said she is representing more than 600 others who might be eligible.
