Hanford's vapors may pose health risk

By Hal Bernton
Seattle Times staff reporter

JACKIE JOHNSTON / AP Unidentified workers at the tank farms on the Hanford nuclear reservation enter an area known to have hazardous vapors.

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The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health reports that chemical vapors venting from Hanford waste tanks may pose significant health risks, a finding that adds new credence to dozens of worker complaints about job-related illness.

Workers who labor close by the 177 waste tanks at the Eastern Washington nuclear complex have cited a wide range of health problems, including bloody noses, memory loss, shortness of breath, frequent headaches and lung scarring.

Such illness reports have been met with skepticism by Hanford contracting officials, who say that they had no evidence of vapor emissions that exceeded federal safety standards.

Investigators for the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) said that the contractor — CH2M Hill Hanford Group — often failed to monitor vapors until hours after worker-exposure incidents, and that health problems cited in 35 interviews with employees "could be related to their exposures to vapors." But the gaps in monitoring made the "true exposure potential" difficult to ascertain, the report concluded.

The NIOSH investigators visited the site in early March after receiving a confidential request from tank-farm workers. The Seattle office of the Government Accountability Project also has investigated worker-safety concerns.

Some 500 workers are tending to tanks that hold about 53 million gallons of high-level radioactive waste along with more than 1,200 chemicals. And since 2001, workers have been involved in at least 70 reported cases of vapor exposure, according to the NIOSH report.

These wastes are the toxic leftovers of the federal effort to produce plutonium for nuclear bombs, and are now being transferred from leaking single-shelled tanks to more secure double-shelled tanks.

Back in 1995 and 1996, respirators were required to be worn by tank-farm workers involved in the transfers. But they were discontinued after a risk evaluation by Westinghouse Hanford concluded that vapor exposure was under control.

But NIOSH investigators found that vapor concentrations, during transfers, could increase to "sufficiently high concentrations to pose a health risk to workers."

And they recommended that workers be once again equipped at a minimum with air-purifying respirators to help protect them from the vapors, and urged CH2M Hill to increase "real-time" monitoring of workers facing potential exposures.
 
The NIOSH visit, as well as a separate visit by the Department of Energy's inspector general, helped spur new safety measures at the tank farm. Currently, all workers must once again wear the respirators, and CH2M Hill has stepped up monitoring. CH2M Hill also has hired an ombudsman to work with employees with health concerns.

"We've already started taking actions on a lot of the recommendations, and a comprehensive corrective action plan is being put into place," said Erik Olds, a spokesman for the Department of Energy's Office of River Protection, which oversees the tank farm.

Joy Turner, spokeswoman for CH2M Hill Hanford, told The Associated Press that the contractor will cooperate with NIOSH. The company already has been working on changes based on its own review, she said.

This is not the first time that NIOSH has looked into tank vapors at Hanford. In 2000, NIOSH said contractors needed to improve collection of worker information, but those recommendations were not carried out, the investigators said.

Many of the workers with health problems now are trying to get insurers to pay medical bills for what they say are job-related illnesses.

One of those, Steve Lewis, said yesterday he hopes the new NIOSH report will help in what so far has been a losing battle to gain compensation for more than $2,000 in medical bills after a 2002 vapor exposure that he says triggered nosebleeds, headaches and other symptoms and "hundreds upon hundreds of hours of stress."

Lewis said he was pleased with the new policy that requires the respirators. But he still is skeptical that the monitoring actually is pinpointing the areas venting the most vapors.

"Right now, they still miss the boat on a lot of things," Lewis said.

Hal Bernton: 206-464-2581 or hbernton@seattletimes.com