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ORAU Supports National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health Dose Reconstruction for Former Energy Employees
Through a contract with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU) and its partners, MJW Corporation Inc. (MJW) and Dade Moeller & Associates are helping to ensure that all energy employees who deserve compensation for their illnesses are rightfully compensated.
Under a five-year contract awarded in September of 2002, and extended several times since, the ORAU team is reconstructing the radiation doses received by workers at various U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and DOE contractor facilities. The information will assist NIOSH in fulfilling its responsibilities to the U.S. Department of Labor in administering the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act (EEOICPA).
The team built a solid infrastructure that allowed quick reconstruction of the doses, cleared a sizable backlog of cases, and moved the dose reconstruction program into a steady-state mode. Components of the process have included:
- Site profiles for 40 DOE sites, including detailed descriptions of radiation exposure conditions
- Establishment of a worker outreach program to present information in the site profiles and solicit input from the workers
- Phone interviews with tens of thousands of workers, coworkers, and family members
- Individual dose reconstructions
The ORAU team is also responsible for the evaluation of Special Exposure Cohort (SEC) petitions received by NIOSH. SEC status may automatically grant compensation to employees who have any of 22 types of cancer and who worked at specific sites. These claimants would not have to go through the dose reconstruction process in order to be compensated.
Visit the ORAU Team Dose Reconstruction Project for NIOSH site for more details on this program.
In this section
- ORAU serves as co-investigator in study of radiation effects on one million U.S. workers
- Hagemeyer Represents NRC at International Meeting
- ORAU Beryllium Lab Marks Perfect Year in 2010 with Zero Test Errors
- ORAU Collaborates with Partner for Successful Design of Electronic Medical Records System for Argonne National Laboratory
- ORAU Supporting NIOSH Dose Reconstruction for Former Energy Workers
- Daugherty Provides Expertise to International Atomic Energy Agency
- ORAU and Partners Contribute Papers on Dose Reconstruction to Special Issue of Health Physics Journal
- ORAU Performing Dose Reconstruction for Defense Threat Reduction Agency
Supporting radiation dose reconstructions for sick nuclear workers
In 2012, ORAU marked its tenth anniversary in helping CDC’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health program facilitate their response to concerns of DOE workers and contractors requesting compensation for radiation-related cancers that resulted from work-related exposure. During the past 10 years, ORAU has compiled, analyzed and reconstructed the dose history of more than 30,000 workers from more than 300 sites in the nation's nuclear weapons complex.