Full Body Burden (50 page)

Over the years, a number of studies have been done on worker illnesses at Rocky Flats.
A DOE-financed study in 1987 found that workers exposed to plutonium experienced a higher proportion of deaths tied to brain tumors and cancer in blood-producing organs. That same year, the epidemiologist Dr. Gregg Wilkinson published an article finding that some exposed Rocky Flats workers with internal plutonium deposits as low as 5 percent of the permissible “lifetime body burden” developed a variety of cancers in excess of what was normal for unexposed workers. The
New York Times
reported that Wilkinson, whose report had received extensive peer review, had been told to alter the results of his study before publishing it. When he first showed his findings to a physician at Los Alamos, the doctor exclaimed, “Oh, this is terrible.… If these findings [are] real, they would shut down the nuclear industry.” Wilkinson said a deputy director “stated that I should not write to please peer reviewers, but rather I should write to please the DOE because they provided funding and support.” Wilkinson published the results anyway. He was
ordered
to submit all future work to an assistant director of the Los Alamos lab for approval before publishing any further data, and in protest he left his job.

Wilkinson then went to the State University of New York at Buffalo and conducted a study on the health of women employed at twelve DOE sites around the country, including Rocky Flats. Over the years the DOE had employed more than eighty thousand women, but had never conducted a study of the health effects of nuclear work on women.
Wilkinson found that exposure to external ionizing radiation appeared to be associated with an increase in leukemia and brain tumors, and an increased risk for all cancers combined.

In 1990, testing by doctors at the National Jewish Hospital in Denver revealed that many workers were suffering from chronic beryllium disease. Unlike cancer or other diseases that were difficult to tie directly to exposure to plutonium or other radioactive elements, beryllium disease was clearly a result of working conditions at Rocky Flats. Exposure to beryllium dust can lead to a buildup of scar tissue in the lungs that reduces the capacity to process oxygen. Several hundred workers were diagnosed with chronic beryllium disease, which has no cure and is often fatal.

A 2003 study found that Rocky Flats workers who inhaled radioactive particles of plutonium were particularly vulnerable to lung cancer.
Rocky Flats workers in general may also be more susceptible to brain cancer, and they appear slightly more susceptible to other cancers such as leukemia. Conversely, in 2009 the CDPHE study concluded that worker cancer deaths were not that much higher than in the general population.

There always seemed to be at least one contradictory study that made it hard to draw firm conclusions.

In 2000, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson acknowledged that workplace exposures had harmed the health of workers in the U.S. nuclear weapons industry. That same year Congress passed the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Act (EEOICA), a program intended to compensate ailing workers and shift the burden of proof of exposure to the government rather than the worker. The government relies on dose reconstruction, which uses estimates and computer
modeling to try to determine past exposure to radiation. The process is expensive, arduous, and prone to error, partly because of industry-wide poor record-keeping.

During the production years at Rocky Flats from 1952 to 1989, more than sixteen thousand people worked at Rocky Flats, and thousands more during the postproduction years. Approximately six thousand of them have applied for compensation on the grounds that their illnesses were caused by radiation or toxic chemicals. In addition to lost records, many have had to deal with repeated delays and complicated exposure formulas. Although hundreds of workers have been helped by the program, by 2011 two of every three who have sought compensation have had their claims denied. Four of the seven members of the Dobrovolny family were denied medical care and compensation.

Charlie Wolf is one of the few managers at Rocky Flats who goes into the hot areas with his workers to coordinate a job or help out in a pinch. Hired in 2003, he is deeply involved in cleanup operations, but he doesn’t live to see the final result of his efforts. Just a year later he develops an aggressive brain tumor called a glioma. The doctors originally give him six months to live—he fights for six years, and dies in 2010. His cancer can be tied directly to Rocky Flats, yet he is repeatedly denied compensation. It isn’t until after his death that his wife and daughters receive $150,000 in compensation, which barely makes a dent in his medical expenses.

In February 2010, Representative Mark Udall introduces the Charlie Wolf Nuclear Workers Compensation Act, designed to reduce some of the red tape of EEOICA and expand the category of individuals and list of cancers that qualify for compensation. The legislation gains little support.

T
HE CLEANUP
itself generates waste. Every glove, shovel, screwdriver, and wrench used to disassemble Rocky Flats equipment becomes toxic, too. Tents are constructed to try to limit airborne contamination when buildings are demolished.
For every single pound of detoxified equipment, another 1.6 pounds of waste is generated.

In August 2004, former grand jury foreman Wes McKinley, whistle-blower Jacque Brever, and FBI agent Jon Lipsky hold a press conference on the steps of the Denver capitol to protest plans to open the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge to the public.
On the way to the event, Lipsky receives a call from his employer. When it’s his turn to speak to reporters, he says, “I received a call from the FBI ordering me not to talk about the Rocky Flats case, so I can’t tell you what I came here to tell you.… As a father and a fellow human being, I urge you not to allow recreation at Rocky Flats. I’m sorry I can’t tell you more.”

On October 13, 2005, the last shipment of transuranic (plutonium-laden) radioactive waste from Rocky Flats heads off to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico, which opened on March 26, 1999, after twenty-five years of planning and complications, including protests and lawsuits.
Based on the compromised cleanup standards, the Rocky Flats cleanup is declared successful. “Our success at Rocky Flats is a great inspiration to those other sites [around the country],” says Clay Sell, deputy secretary of the DOE. “Six years ago, seven years ago, the problems at Rocky seemed insurmountable.” The EPA certifies the site on June 13, 2007. In July the DOE transfers nearly 4,000 of the 6,200 acres of the Rocky Flats site to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for eventual use as a public recreation area. Approximately 1,300 acres of deeply contaminated land, including the former industrial zone and the areas capped with cement, are to remain off-limits. The DOE will retain this land for long-term surveillance and monitoring.

When the cleanup is declared complete, 2,600 pounds of plutonium are still missing.
Studies demonstrate that vegetation and plants at Rocky Flats absorb plutonium from the soil—called “uptake”—and birds and animals carry it far afield. The control of spreading weeds is a constant problem.
Another study shows that small burrowing animals such as groundhogs and even the tiny Preble’s meadow jumping mouse regularly bring plutonium to the surface, despite the DOE’s computer modeling that claims plutonium will remain stable below the surface.

Despite public opposition and concern, plans move forward for the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge. Visitors, including school
groups, will enjoy a visitor station staffed on a “seasonal basis,” at least sixteen miles of open trails, parking at trailheads, scenic overlooks, and the opportunity to view wildlife and go hiking and biking. Home development near Rocky Flats continues at a rapid pace, with the closest house within two miles. Nearly two and a half million people live in the Denver metropolitan area within a fifty-mile radius of the former nuclear weapons factory.

I
N THE
spring of 2005, Tamara Smith Meza goes in for her regularly scheduled MRI scan. For months the results have been normal, but this time the doctors are concerned. It looks like the tumor has returned and has spread to Tamara’s abdomen. The doctor schedules a full-body PET scan, but in preparation she has to undergo an ultrasound test. She usually keeps her emotions in check, but this time she is frightened.

On the day of Tamara’s ultrasound, her regular doctor isn’t in, but he leaves instructions for the technician to go ahead with the ultrasound in preparation for the PET scan. Tamara and David sit down and answer the usual questions about her health, her list of medications—questions she has answered a million times. One question in particular is always more difficult than the others.

“Are you pregnant?” the technician asks.

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

Tamara is very sure. She glances at David. Like her sister, Tamara has always had fertility problems. She and David are now thinking about adopting a child.

Tamara lies down on the table and the technician smears jelly on her abdomen. She begins to move the wand over her skin. David sits nearby, looking intently at the screen. Suddenly the technician laughs. “Well, there it is!”

David looks up in surprise. This seems a little unprofessional. Tamara is stunned by the technician’s enthusiastic tone. “What?” she asks. She cranes her head toward the screen. “Is that the tumor?”

“Tumor?” the technician says. “What tumor? That’s a baby!”

“A baby?” Tamara looks at the technician as if she were out of her mind. David is speechless.

“Yes.” The technician leans forward and moves the pointer on the screen.

“But we can’t have children!” Tamara says. “We know. We’ve tried. I’m sick.”

“Well,” the technician says, “I’m not your regular doctor, and I don’t know what your health issues are. But tumors don’t have heartbeats. And this has a heartbeat.”

Six months later, Tamara and David are the parents of a healthy baby boy. They name him Isaac.

J
IM
S
TONE
, the troubleshooter-turned-whistle-blower whose testimony helped shut down Rocky Flats, has waited a long time for his reward. Following the FBI raid in 1989, he filed a whistle-blower fraud case against Rockwell and was awarded $4.2 million in damages. But he never saw a dime of it. Rockwell appealed the case and eventually it went to the U.S. Supreme Court. After his eighteen-year fight, in 2007 the U.S. Supreme Court denies Stone any damages and also makes it more difficult for whistle-blowers to share in proceeds from fraud lawsuits against government contractors. By this time Stone is eighty-one years old and living in a nursing home. Two weeks after the decision, he dies from complications related to Alzheimer’s.

“
He died with nothing more than the clothes on his back and the love of his family and friends,” says his son Bob Stone. “I know if he had it to do all over again, even knowing how it turned out, he would have done it just the same.”

I
N THE
spring of 2010, four years after the decision in
Cook v. Rockwell International Corporation
, the appeal finally goes before a three-judge panel at the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver. The award, now at $926 million including damages and accrued interest, to more than twelve thousand Colorado homeowners is at stake. The case has been in litigation for nearly twenty years.

Peter Nordberg and his colleagues present their case—again—before the judges. Peter returns home to Mykaila, once again exhausted, but confident that they’ve done a good job.

My siblings and I tensely wait to hear the judges’ decision. No matter what happens, there will be no compensation for us. Even so, not just our troubled years but our best years as a family were in Bridledale, and we loved it. We loved the land and we loved the house. We want some sense of justice.

I am hopeful that the decision will stand. The evidence seems overwhelming. My brother, Kurt—who’s always teased me about wearing rose-colored glasses—is cynical. “Are you kidding, Kris?” he asks.

He’s right. On September 2, 2010, the decision is overturned. The three-judge panel rules that under the law, the presence of plutonium on properties south and east of the plant at best shows only a risk and not actual damage to residents’ health or properties. “ ‘DNA damage and cell death’ do not constitute a bodily injury in the absence of the manifestation of an actual disease or injury,” the panel writes, later adding, “Plaintiffs must necessarily establish that plutonium particles released from Rocky Flats caused a detectable level of actual damage.” Decreased property values cannot, the panel further states, be counted as damage.

The court also rules that the jury reached its decision based on faulty instructions that incorrectly stated the law.

I am stunned.

Peter Nordberg never hears the verdict.

In April 2010, just after returning from the appeals court in Colorado, Peter buys tickets for Mykaila and their two daughters to see Garth Brooks in Las Vegas. He isn’t a fan himself, and as always he has plenty of work to do, but he wants them to have a good time. When Mykaila and the girls return from their trip, Peter is sick. It isn’t unusual for him to come back from Colorado tired after a stressful court proceeding; sometimes the altitude bothers him, though mostly he just needs to unwind. This time, though, it seems worse. Mykaila is worried. “I’m fine,” he tells her. He doesn’t want to go to the doctor; he hates doctors. In all their years of marriage, he’s only been to the doctor
three times. Mykaila thinks,
Okay, well, he’s just tired. He’s run a marathon of a case. He just needs rest
.

But on the third day he’s ill, Mykaila insists he go to the emergency room. He seems to worsen even as they drive, and by the time they get there, he can’t get out of the car and asks for a wheelchair. In the emergency room, Peter’s heart rate is above 250 and he can barely breathe.

The doctors stabilize him and get him upstairs to a hospital room. He’s told he’ll be in the hospital for a day or two of observation. When Peter starts pestering the staff with lots of questions, Mykaila knows he’s back to his old self. “I feel a hundred percent better,” he says. From his bed, he makes a video for their son Brinkley. “I’m going to have dinner now. I will see you in a couple of days,” he says into the camera. “I love you. Good-bye.” Mykaila sits with him as he finishes dinner and starts to fall asleep.