Nuke activists ask Sen. McCaskill for a Honeywell investigation
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A week ago, Sen. Claire McCaskill‘s Westport office received a visit from Maurice Copeland and Ivory Mae Thomas, retired employees of the Honeywell-operated Kansas City Plant, along with representatives from PeaceWorks KC and Physicians for Social Responsibility.
The visit came one week after The Pitch published this feature story on former Honeywell workers suffering from job-related illnesses.
The activists received an audience with McCaskill’s aides, not the senator herself. They asked that McCaskill consider calling for a federal investigation into worker safety issues and contamination at the Honeywell site, located in south Kansas City on Bannister Road. The plant manufactures non-nuclear parts for nuclear weapons under contract with the Department of Energy and the National Nuclear Services Administration.
According to Terrie Barrie with the Alliance of Nuclear Worker Advocacy Groups, “We are asking that the Department of Labor take the burden of proof off the claimants. At this point in time, a claimant needs to prove that if he is sick from a lung condition, for example, he has to prove where he got it, what time he got it, that type of thing … if we had the documentation to prove these things, the government wouldn’t need a program (like the EEIOCP).” Barrie says her group also wants the government to review the EEIOCP’s denied claims.
