A researcher discovers that 94 employees of a former Hazleton company either have the disease or are at risk to get it later.
Reading Eagle 1-6-2001
HAZLETON—Twenty-five workers at a former northeastern Pennsylvania beryllium plant that closed 20 years ago have beryllium disease, which causes breathing difficulty and can be fatal, a researcher said.
The sick workers might be eligible for up to $150,000 in federal compensation.
Dr. Kenneth D. Rosenmann of Michigan State University said he has identified 714 workers at the former Beryllium Corp. plant who are still alive, and 522 of them have taken a blood test for beryllium disease.
In addition to the 25 who have beryllium disease, one has another type of lung disease and another 69 have a sensitivity to beryllium and are candidates to get beryllium disease later.
In all, more than 18 percent of the workers either have or are candidates to get the disease.
“That’s the highest percentages I’ve seen,” Rosenmann said when comparing rates of disease and sensitivity among Hazleton workers with workers from other plants around the country.
One obstacle in testing the workers is that many workers have left the Hazleton area in the decades since the plant shut down, Rosenmann said.
“They’re all over the country,” he said, “One fellow called us from the islands in the South Pacific.”
The federal compensation is to be available because the Clinton administration reversed 50 years of government policy by acknowledging that workers often were not given adequate protection or informed about job hazards in the nuclear bomb-making effort.
Last month, President Clinton put the Labor Department in charge of the compensation effort and ordered it to set up rules that make sure the program “mini-mizes the administrative burden on workers and their survivors.”
The Labor Department has until May 31 to write the eligibility rules. Rosenmann said his discussions with the Energy Department have made him conclude that workers must have the disease, rather than just the sensitivity to beryllium, to collect payments.
