Meet the Pied Piper of sick Honeywell tradesmen
As an interviewer and outreach manager with the Building Trades National Medical Screening Program, Walter Smith always starts out with one question: “Do you think your health was affected by your work at the Department of Energy site?” There are three possible answers: Yes, no and maybe.
“If you walked into that DOE site and you know you were healthy, then there’s always that possibility that you could have gotten polluted,” Smith says.
Since 2001, the government has offered monetary compensation and to pay the medical bills of anyone who might have gotten sick from working at Honeywell or any other DOE site. An amendment to the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program was signed by the president in 2004 to add Part E to the EEOICP, so that people who worked for contractors at DOE sites (an independent electric company, for example) could be eligible for compensation as well.
Marlon Smith is one such worker. He was a roofer for Schreiber, a company hired to repair Honeywell’s roof on two separate projects, one in 2001, and again in 2005. He remembers wearing only a dust mask while standing yards away from employees who were fully suited with respirators. As they cut into the old roof, Marlon says, “I asked the foreman, I say, ‘Hey, where’s [my respirator]?’ He says, ‘Oh, it ain’t toxic enough.'”
The roofers watched a film about safety before getting on Honeywell’s roof, Marlon says. “The class was good, but … on the roof, it’s a different story. You get put in positions where you know it’s not right to do this, but the bossman says ‘do it,’ and it’s either that or not have a job.”
