By Dan Klepal
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Charlie Alvis says he's dying today because he worked to keep others safe decades ago.

A worker at the Fernald uranium enrichment plant, Alvis directed firefighting, rescue and training operations from 1960 through 1971. He inhaled toxic fumes while responding to fires, chemical spills and explosions. More often than not, he didn't wear a respirator, or took it off to bark orders at his crew.

Charlie Alvis, a former Fernald Feed Materials Production Center employee, in front of his Millville, Ohio home. (Gary Landers photo) | ZOOM |

Today, at 77, Alvis believes that work fried his lungs and weakened his heart: only 70 percent of his lungs work, and a defibrillator implanted in his heart has revived him six times.

Alvis is one of the 6,000 Fernald workers who mined uranium from raw ore to fuel America's nuclear weapons program during the height of the Cold War. Over four decades, the men handled radioactive materials and breathed fumes from hazardous chemicals, never questioning their government.

But today, the men are old and many are sick, suffering from cancers, asbestos and lung diseases they attribute to their work. The government has told them they may be paid for their pain and suffering, but the men are less than sure.

Three years after Congress approved two compensation programs, 263 of 680 Fernald claims from one of those programs have been denied. Only 17 have been paid, and Alvis and the 400 others fear they'll never see the first dime.

The men and their families need the money to help pay medical bills. The payments, many of the men say, would also acknowledge that they sacrificed their health for their country.

"The people out there couldn't see any danger, but it was there," Alvis says. "I think we have been done wrong from the beginning."

Uranium dust and coveralls

Click to view an Acrobat PDF file (76k) showing a detailed timeline of how international events influenced Fernald employment and production. (Charles W. Jones infographic) | ZOOM |

For many, Fernald was a labor of love - the love of country. The vast majority of the workers came out of military service in the Cold War era when Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev pounded on a podium threatening to "bury" their country, homes and loved ones.

At an average of $2 per hour in the 1950s, work in the production area of Fernald was a dream job for many. The men were involved in top-secret government work, which they were assured was safe. The work was so secret they didn't discuss it even with their wives.

Most were exposed daily to clouds of uranium dust and fumes from hazardous acids and other chemicals inside the production buildings. In those early decades, they were supplied with nothing more than rubber gloves, white overalls and goggles.

Vast open pits at the plant acted as a dumping ground for a hodge-podge of hazardous chemicals and contaminated items. Those chemicals and uranium leached into the underground water used for drinking and showering.

In 1988, the government admitted that contamination at Fernald was a health threat.

Scientists today understand more about the hazards of working with uranium, acids and other hazardous materials than they did four decades ago. Still, the former Fernald workers say the government knew it was dangerous work even in the 1960s and should have told them.

"They knew, they just wouldn't tell us because we'd all quit," says Shirley Chaney, 73, who worked at Fernald from 1953 until 1958. One of Chaney's duties was to crawl inside empty acid tanks and scrub down the walls with a rag.

His protection? A time limit on his work. "Fifteen minutes in, fifteen minutes out,'' he says.

George Bassitt, a chemical operator at the site for more than 37 years, worked in nearly every building there.

"All we had was white coveralls, a pair of shoes and a hat," Bassitt says. "Today, when they work with the materials we were handling, they're in a moon suit. My philosophy was: take care of yourself, 'cause nobody else will."

'A political move'

That's exactly what a few of the men are doing today.

Rudy Crawford, 74, represents retired Fernald workers and holds monthly meetings at Perkins Restaurant in Harrison to update them on changes to the government programs. He sometimes tells them if another worker has died. Nearly one-third of the 6,000 Fernald production workers who labored at the plant over 40 years have died.

Crawford used to be a loyal company man. But now, he views the compensation programs as a political ploy that will leave many deserving people empty-handed.

"It was a political move to put a pot of money out there, and now they're guarding off anyone trying to get in there," says Crawford, a 35-year veteran of the plant who has received a letter from the government saying he already is dead.

Federal officials say they understand the atomic workers' frustration, but point to 9,000 such claims already paid to nuclear workers or their families nationwide, totaling at least $13.5 million. More than 38,000 claims remain unpaid.

Roberta Mosier, deputy director at the U.S. Department of Labor, says part of the reason for the delay in claims being paid is how the law is written.

The program offers a one-time, $150,000 payment to former atomic workers or family members for cancers caused by radiation, sickness related to beryllium and chronic lung disease. The majority of the Fernald claims won't be processed until the government finishes a study required by law.

Under those requirements:

• Officials must follow a complex formula to reconstruct exposure levels over time at every site within each plant throughout the nation. The $10 million study at Fernald is expected to be done by the end of this year.

• A panel of doctors must compare those findings with each worker's medical records.

• If there is a 50 percent or better chance that the worker's illness was caused by working conditions at the plant, the claim is paid. If not, the claim is denied.

In the settled claims, officials found sufficient evidence of work-related illness before the study was completed.

"I understand people are frustrated, but we have to follow the law the way it's written," Mosier says. "They've been waiting for a long time for this program. A lot thought it would never happen.

"Finally, it's here, and now it's taking a long time."

Bureaucratic bickering

Squabbling between state and federal governments is tying up a second compensation program, which offers medical coverage and lost wages dating back decades.

The Department of Energy program requires qualified workers to apply to state workers' compensation boards for payment.

The program works just fine as long as a company still exists to pay the claim. The Department of Energy tells the company to approve the claim, and the company is then reimbursed.

The glitch comes when a company no longer exists, as in the case of National Lead of Ohio. That company managed the Fernald plant for the Department of Energy from 1953 until 1985, and those who worked at the plant were employed by National Lead.

Because National Lead no longer exists, a former Fernald worker is left to fight with the state to get the benefits.

Jeremy Jackson, spokesman for the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation, says Ohio officials suggested that the Department of Energy reimburse the state as if it were a private company.

It took the Energy Department a year to respond before declining that suggestion, which is part of the reason only one of 200 Fernald claims with that department have been processed.

"What troubles me more than the length of time it has taken (the Department of Energy) to respond is the lack of alternatives your staff has proposed to help get this program off the ground," Ohio Workers' Compensation Administrator James Conrad wrote in an August letter. "We grow increasingly frustrated with the general lack of action on DOE's part."

Donald Cook, a 74-year-old Cleves man who worked at Fernald for 18 years, is more blunt: "We're dying off every month. I'm on borrowed time myself."

A 45-year fight

Henrietta Brater has been fighting longer than anyone.

And the Ross resident is no closer today than she was in the 1950s at getting acknowledgment that her husband's work milling uranium slugs from 1955 until 1958 caused him to break out in tumors.

He died in 1962 at age 27.

His doctor told her husband, Donald Wilson, he suffered a rare form of cancer. The disease, he said, was likely caused by Wilson's work, advising he file a workers' compensation claim.

"His doctor was telling us he became sick because of something our government was knowingly exposing him to," Brater says.

She says her family became pariahs in 1958 when word got around that Wilson had filed a compensation claim against the company. It was one of the first such claims by a Fernald worker.

"We became the enemy," Brater recalls. "Most of the people felt the same way we had, that our own government could not possibly do what we were accusing them of. We must just be money-hungry people spreading lies.

"This was extremely hard on both of us; this was our hometown."

Most recently, a panel of doctors reviewing her case said Wilson didn't work at Fernald long enough to contract cancer.

"How they can determine who got sick there and who didn't, I don't know," Brater says. "It just seems like justice was never done."

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E-mail dklepal@enquirer.com