When Congress enacted the Energy Employees Occupational Injury Compensation Program (EEOICPA) at the end of 2000, few would have expected there to have been a backlog of 15,177 state workers’ compensation cases awaiting review by the physician panels established under the act at the National Institutes of Occupational Safety and Health just two years later. [1] Sadly, this is a stark reminder of the difficulties of creating a blended compensation system, in which state compensation systems are asked to handle claims that have their origin in the federal government’s wartime production of nuclear weapons. In the case of these EEOICPA claims, NIOSH must review each claim to determine whether it was due to an exposure at a federal nuclear facility.

Under EEOICPA, eligible employees with covered illnesses will receive $150,000 in lump-sum payments, and prospective medical expenses related to their disease will be paid. Also, lump-sum payments of $50,000 and prospective medical benefits will be paid to some workers who have been determined as eligible for benefits under the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act. Specified survivors of covered employees also are entitled to receive compensation.

A look at the Labor Department’s website description of the Special Exposure Cohort reveals much of the complexity and difficulty of this program and its hazards to workers:>

Special Exposure Cohort Employees (SEC)

The Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act established a Special Exposure Cohort of employees of the Department of Energy and its contractors and subcontractors who:

• Worked at gaseous diffusion plants in Paducah, Kentucky, Portsmouth, Ohio or Oak Ridge, Tennessee for a total of at least 250 days before Feb. 1, 1992, and were monitored for radiation exposure with dosimetry badges or had jobs with similar exposures to those monitored; or
• Worked before Jan. 1, 1974, on Amchitka Island, Alaska, and were exposed to radiation related to the Long Shot, Milrow or Cannikin underground nuclear tests.

The Act also authorizes the secretary of Health and Human Services to add other classes of employees to the Special Exposure Cohort.

These employees, or their survivors, are eligible for benefits if, after beginning covered employment, they contracted:

• Bone cancer;
• Renal cancer;
• Leukemia (other than chronic lymphocytic leukemia) provided that the onset of the disease was at least two years after first exposure;
• Lung cancer (other than in situ lung cancer that is discovered during or after a post-mortem exam);
• One of the following diseases, provided onset was at least five years after the first exposure:
• Multiple myeloma
• Lymphomas (other than Hodgkin’s disease)
• Primary cancer of the:
• Thyroid
• Male or female breast
• Esophagus
• Stomach
• Pharynx
• Small intestine
• Pancreas
• Bile ducts
• Gall bladder
• Salivary gland
• Urinary bladder
• Brain
• Colon
• Ovary
• Liver (except if cirrhosis or hepatitis B is indicated)[2]

The record for claims handled as statutorily defined illnesses, such as beryillium disease, is much better. Congress created a claims processing facility at the Department of Labor and this unit has successfully processed claims totaling over $536 million.