PRESS RELEASE

For Immediate Release

July 24, 2001

Contact: Harry Williams (865-661-9550)

Janet Michel (865-966-5918)

Coalition for a Healthy Environment calls for external review of DOE's

safety culture

CHE realizes that DOE's licensed and/or certified safety professionals,

past and present, including professional engineers (P.E.s), certified

safety professionals (CSPs), certified industrial hygienists (CIHs) and

certified health physicists (CHPs) are independently accountable to the

State licensing Boards and/or national certifying Boards for their

workplace competency and ethics. They are required to adhere to

professional codes of ethics by which they "shall hold paramount the

health, safety and welfare of the public/workplace in the performance of

their professional duty." This includes the obligation to put workplace

health and safety ahead of their job security, by "blowing the whistle"

when necessary to ensure workers/others are made aware of deficient health

and safety conditions.

CHE believes that if DOE safety professionals been properly trustworthy,

the unsafe and unhealthy conditions that impacted thousands of loyal,

hardworking DOE employees would largely have been prevented. Most our

members are disabled and thousands more across the country are disabled or

have prematurely died. The agencies' last chief admitted admitted there

was a problem. Still, DOE's safety professionals generally subordinate

their professional duty to their economic self-interest. In situations

where they should, by their professional ethics, "blow the whistle" about

health and safety issues, they are doing the opposite as demonstrated by

the apparent loss and/or destruction of engineering records and physical

evidence about the K-25 potable water system.

In former Secretary Bill Richardson's words, "we put people in harms way,

we did not protect them, and we lied to them."

CHE is well aware of the case of Joseph P. Carson, P.E., a licensed

professional engineer and DOE nuclear safety engineer, who is an eight-time

prevailing and still aggrieved DOE whistleblower regarding workplace and

public health and safety issues in Oak Ridge. CHE supports Carson's

contention that DOE is not have a safety-conscious work environment nor

trustworthy - ethical, competent and accountable - safety professionals.

Other DOE safety professionals and the safety professions have not shown

any significant cohesiveness to their professional code of ethics during

the many years of Carson v. DOE. Many think that DOE is using Carson v.

DOE as an object lesson to intimidate other safety professionals from

documenting unsafe and unhealthy conditions in DOE.

CHE knows first hand of the daunting environment, health and safety issues

DOE and its contracators face These issues result, in large part, from a

failure of DOE safety professionals, past and present, to put professional

duty before their career self-interest. These daunting problems cannot be

satisfactorily addressed unless and until DOE is fully characterized by a

safety-conscious work environment and trustworthy - ethical, competent and

accountable - safety professionals.

In order to accomplish this:

CHE calls for other organizations and individuals impacted by DOE

operations to join it in calling for the following:

· An expert, external, objective, and comprehensive review of DOE's safety

culture with a particular focus on the trustworthiness of DOE's

licensed/certified safety professionals.

· For DOE to establish a requirement that it and its contractor engineers,

who have responsibilities for workplace and public health and safety, be

licensed and use their seals on documents involving workplace and public

health and safety.

· For DOE to explain, publicly, how its stated policy of "zero tolerance

for reprisal" has been implemented in the case of Joseph P. Carson, P.E.

In particular, CHE hopes that members of Tennessee's Congressional

Delegation will support this initiative to show their support for Joe

Carson, P.E., a federal employee who, with his family, has risked and

sacrificed much for the cause of honest public service and trustworthy

professional performance in DOE.

The Coalition for a Healthy Environment (CHE) is a non-profit, educational

and outreach organization largely composed of DOE workers whose health was

damaged by unsafe and unhealthy workplace conditions in Department of

Energy facilities in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

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