Coalition for a Healthy Environment
1120 Melton Hill Drive, Clinton, Tennessee 37716
July 27, 1998

Mr. James Hall
U.S. Department of Energy
Oak Ridge Operations Office
P.O. Box 2001
Oak Ridge, TN 37831

Mr. Harold T. Conner, Jr.
Lockheed Martin
P.O. Box 2001
Oak Ridge, TN 37831

Director
JSI Center for Environmental Health Studies
22 Elmhurst Rd.
Arlington, MA 02174

Director
Occupational and Environmental Medicine
University of Cincinnati
5251 Medical Sciences Building
231 Bethesda Ave.
Cincinnati, OH 45267-0812

Re: Health Study of the K-25 Workers

Dear Sirs:

This letter is to inform you of dissatisfaction and impending monumental
problems with the "health study" currently being conducted by Drs. Bird,
Lockey, and Freeman on 53 K-25 workers.  We have been told that many people
and organizations are waiting to take action on the care of us and on the
unhealthy work situation at K-25 until the doctors have completed their
work. 

We cautiously agreed to this effort because the physicians themselves
assured us that the evaluation would be undertaken with the utmost urgency,
with the highest standards of medical care, and in complete doctor-patient
confidence.  We were told Lockheed Martin would only be brought in if there
were conclusive evidence of occupation exposure.  We have reason to believe
the final reports will be considered conclusive, when nothing could be
further from the truth.

This spells disaster for several reasons.
(1) Some of us are unable to get disability benefits when are our own
doctors, who see us regularly, have advised this.  Metlife, Lockheed
Martin's carrier says it will relay on the "health study" results for its'
determinations.
(2) Given the law in Tennessee, some of us had to file lawsuits in order to
activate insurance coverage for diagnosis and treatment of illnesses that
might be occupational in origin because of statutes of limitation and
barriers to obtaining answers to our conditions.  Legal action taken
primarily because of statutes of limitation and barriers to obtaining
answers to our conditions.  Attorneys are waiting for the final reports and
have been told by the company that here can be movement on our cases until
the repots are complete.
(3) Some of the workers still do not have interim reports - one year and 10
months into this effort.
(4) The interim "medical" reports read like "legal" reports.
(5) There are an unconscionable number of errors in the interim reports,
which they have supposedly been working on for a year.  This doesn't bode
well for the final reports.
(6) Some of the testing requested in the interim reports is obviously
designed to not find anything. Requesting whole blood and urine samples
after people have been away from the site for 1-3 years is ludicrous.  This
appears to be a deliberate choice on the part of the company and DOE, even
though they have known for decades how to test for chronic heavy metal
exposure via urine and blood, and in fact used to do so regularly with all
workers at the K-25 site.
(7) Many of the worker's conditions are not even mentioned in the interim
reports or they are minimized.
(8) The doctors have not examined us in 1-1.5 years.
(9) A poorly executed attempt by the doctors to "create" a new urine
thiocyanate reference range, through their own study, wasted time and money
that should have spent on sick people.
(10) The doctor-directed industrial hygiene sampling was ridiculously
limited in scope and in location, as though the physicians were told to
wear blinders. It was reminiscent of the NIOSH review for cyanide in 1996.
(11) Communication has been atrocious and promises made by the doctors have
been consistently broken,
(12) The doctors have not adequately consulted with appropriate
specialists.  They are depending on their own expertise, which may not be
enough.

There has been no action while our health deteriorates.  Think about this
scenario.  You see a doctor with a sore throat.  He or she and the nurse
record your blood pressure and pulse and a few other typical pieces of
data.  The doctor then leaves the room for one and one half or two years
and then returns to tell you that a strep culture is needed.  You then wait
for months for someone to come and take the body tissue needed for the
culture.  Meanwhile you develop pneumonia and lay there wondering whether
you are going to live or die.  This is exactly what has happened to us!

We did not sign up to be part of a health study, or even worse, a cover-up;
we thought we would be getting closer to real medical care. The length of
time for the interim reports and biological sampling plans are nothing
short of ridiculous!  We are no closer to answers or treatment now than we
were on the first day that we met these doctors, 22 months ago.

It appears that the doctors are accountable to no one and spending a lot of
the taxpayer's money only to muddy the water. Outsiders viewing this
situation may say we should be grateful that the government is spending a
lot of money to investigate this by hiring these doctors.  However, it
appears that our tax dollars are a windfall for them and they are
conveniently stalling to protect DOE and Lockheed Martin.  If we (the ill
people) were paying the ticket from our pockets, we would have answers or
they would have been fired.

Why are these doctors accountable to no one? The organization paying for
this study certainly has no interest in timely results.  The longer we
wait, the harder it will be to find anything.  The contract and exchange of
money between DOE/Lockheed Martin and the doctors have generated concern.
We are waiting for the complete contract and disclosure of salary paid
(part of this has been received).  At the beginning of this evaluation, we
repeatedly asked for a copy of the contract and a copy of their plan and
never received either.

It appears that the world's largest defense contractor (Lockheed Martin) is
our HMO. The doctors have said they will not be in charge of our health
care.  Our local physicians are stymied.  They often won't take charge of
our care saying they are waiting for the occupational medicine physicians.
So, we don't get any treatment at all.

The following is a quote from a Lockheed Martin legal response to the
Department of Labor (dated 4/30/98) concerning a complaint on illegal taping:
"Drs. Lockey, Bird, and Freeman are the doctors that spoke at the public
meeting either in person or by telephone and Lockheed Respondents presume
these are the same doctors which attended the private meeting.  These three
doctors, specialists in occupational health, have been hired by LMES to
study the medical conditions of active and former employees and attempt to
discover whether anything at the Oak Ridge plants could have caused their
present medical conditions.  Despite having a mandate to do so, after two
and one years, these doctors have yet to present any information to LMES
which would indicate that there is an occupational health problem at the
Oak Ridge plants.  In addition, these doctors were permitted and encouraged
to discuss and study all of the health problems, whether allegedly
occupationally related or not, of the persons being studied."

Two of our greatest concerns are:
1. Lockheed Martin has "engineered" this project to stall our efforts to
get answers by not insisting timely execution of the evaluation.  It would
not be first time that they have used stalling tactics.
2. We are gravely concerned about the Hypocratic Oath and the ethics that
go along with being an Occupational Medicine physician.  We don't feel they
have put the patient first.

We do not know whether the doctors members of the American College of
Occupational and Environmental Medicine Code of Ethical Conduct, but point
out that they have not been true to at least four of the principles of
ethical behavior. Physicians should:
1. accord the highest priority to the health and safety of individuals in
both the workplace and the environment;
2. relate honestly and ethically in all professional relationships;
3. strive to expand and disseminate medical knowledge and participate in
ethical research efforts as appropriate;
4. communicate to individuals and/or groups any significant observations
and recommendations concerning their health or safety.

If Lockheed Martin constrained them in the contract from conducting an
ethical project, they should have declined the work.

We urge you to thoroughly investigate this unethical health study which was
supposed to get medical help to ill people.  We caution you to not rely on
this study for any conclusive results.  We are truly sorry our tax dollars
have been spent on such a wasteful activity.  We hope you are too.

We still want exactly what we asked for in the beginning of this:
1. the correct, knowledgeable, independent, ethical medical specialists to
evaluate us;
2. access to ALL documents (classified or not) that will help us learn
about what is making us sick; and
3. the resources to get all necessary medical treatment.

Sincerely,




Janet R. Michel, the ill workers, and concerned citizens


[Copies on following page]


c: Senator Fred Thompson
Senator William Frist
Congressman John Duncan
Congressman Zack Wamp
Secretary of Energy
Assistant Secretary of Energy Dr. Paul Seligman
EPA Administrator Carol Browner
EPA Region Administrator John Hankinson
Governor Don Sundquist
Justin Wilson
Commissioner Milton Hamilton
Commissioner Nancy Menke
The State of Tennessee's Local Oversight Committee
The DOE Oak Ridge Environmental Management Site Specific Advisory Board
Frank Parker
Jackie Kittrell, Esq.
Robert Seldon, Esq.
Rowland and Rowland, Esq.
David Lee, Esq.
Edward Slavin, Jr., Esq.
The Washington Post
The New York Times
The Tennessean
The Knoxville News Sentinel
The Oak Ridger
NBC News
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