Hanford workers will wear respirators to protect against chemical exposure

By The Associated Press

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RICHLAND — Workers at the Hanford nuclear reservation will be required to wear respirators with supplied air tanks when working near some underground tanks holding radioactive waste, a federal contractor said yesterday.

The requirement was among several changes announced by Colorado-based CH2M Hill, the contractor hired to clean up waste left from the production of plutonium for nuclear weapons at Hanford. The company has come under fire in recent months amid claims by workers that vapors from the tanks have sickened them.

"We are taking this additional step to address employee concerns while we conduct a more comprehensive review," said Dale Allen, a senior vice president for CH2M Hill. "The health and safety of our workers is our top priority."

The contractor also is field testing several devices aimed at sampling the air around individual workers. They include air-sampling pumps worn by employees, organic vapor monitors that employees will be required to wear on their clothing, close to their faces, and badges that change color to indicate the presence of ammonia.

CH2M Hill also has created a new, senior-level position of environmental-health director to oversee the industrial-hygiene program and is seeking a national expert to fill the position.

The company decided to require respirators with supplied air tanks because of concerns about nitrous oxide vapors from single-shell tanks and double-shell tanks that lack ventilation. Supplied air will be required because there is no commercially available respirator cartridge that filters nitrous oxide, the company said.

The action is not in response to a specific vapor-exposure report, CH2M Hill said.

State and federal governments are investigating procedures at Hanford's tank farms amid allegations that corners are being cut to speed cleanup of the nation's most contaminated nuclear site.

More than 90 workers have sought medical care for exposure at the tank farms in the past two years, according to data gathered by the Government Accountability Project, a nonprofit watchdog group.

For 40 years, the Hanford reservation made plutonium for the nation's nuclear-weapons arsenal. Today, work there centers on a $50 billion to $60 billion cleanup to be finished by 2035 under an accelerated schedule pushed by the Bush administration.
 
The most deadly waste, about 53 million gallons of radioactive liquid, sludge and saltcake, sits in 177 underground tanks less than 10 miles from the Columbia River. Plans call for turning much of that waste into glass logs and burying it at a nuclear-waste repository.

Experts have identified as many as 1,200 chemicals, including some known cancer-causing agents, in the tanks. Critics have argued that basic respirators can't protect against all 1,200 chemicals.

CH2M Hill and the Energy Department, which manages the cleanup, say most of the chemicals are diluted and pose no danger to workers.

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