The Washington state House of Representatives last week voted 69-29 in favor of legislation that would make Hanford Site personnel more likely to be awarded workers’ compensation, but not before making a significant change to the bill. The state Senate now has its turn to consider Substitute House Bill 1723.
The bill, modeled after a state law for firefighters, would require the Washington state Department of Labor and Industries to presume that a broad range of diseases were caused by exposures to chemical vapors or other toxic substances if a Hanford worker had spent a single eight-hour shift anywhere on the Department of Energy site near the city of Richland.
The law for firefighters allows the state agency to consider other evidence. House lawmakers originally did not include corresponding language in the bill for Hanford workers, but it was added after the legislation was heard in committee and before the House vote. “The presumption of occupational disease may be rebutted by clear and convincing evidence,” the bill now says. Before Labor and Industries approves a claim for compensation it can consider evidence such as smoking, physical fitness, weight, lifestyle, family history, exposures at other jobs, and exposures from nonwork activities.
Illnesses presumed in the bill to be caused by working at Hanford encompass respiratory diseases, neurological diseases, and a number of cancers, including lung, thyroid, breast, colon, and many brain cancers and leukemia. Hanford workers who submitted testimony in favor of the bill said it is currently too difficult to prove that illnesses were caused by Hanford exposures. For example, workers might not know exactly what chemicals they were exposed to from chemical vapors associated with radioactive waste held in Hanford’s underground tanks. The legislation would apply to workers on projects beyond the Hanford tank farm, including those assigned to projects tearing down buildings and digging up waste sites.
The watchdog group Hanford Challenge testified to lawmakers that worker claims are denied at five times the rate of claims submitted by employees at other self-insured organizations. The Department of Energy at Hanford is self-insured for worker compensation claims and contracts with a third-party administrator. DOE pays medical expenses and a portion of wages lost while a worker recovers from a workplace injury or occupational disease if the state agency approves a compensation claim.
Business and insurance interests have opposed the bill. They testified that it would override standard workers’ compensation tenets by not requiring causation between exposure and disease. They also criticized the legislation for presuming workplace causation of an illness without considering where a person worked on the Hanford Site or what tasks the claimant performed.
