Cancer and bureaucracy plague Alaskan workers

When construction workers who prepared nuclear test sites on Alaska’s Amchitka Island in the 1960s and early 70s first discovered they shared high rates of cancer, U.S. federal authorities insisted there was no radiation and therefore no link between the cancer and their illness.

Amchitka is a narrow, 50-kilometer island at the end of the Aleutian chain of islands between Alaska and Russia. It was turned over to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 1974, and Amchitka workers started dying of cancer within a few years.

About 1,500 people who worked on the island from 1965 to 1974 have been identified; almost 500 of them have already died.

Doctors now say one of three Amchitka workers will develop bladder, colon or one of 20 other radiation-caused cancers, and in 2000 the U.S. Congress approved a compensation package.

But, according to a recent article in the Anchorage Daily News, many construction veterans say they’re still fighting for compensation.

Those who have contracted any of 22 specific cancers or silicosis automatically qualify for $150,000 in compensation, plus medical benefits that could prove invaluable as the workers age, such as assisted living costs. To date, nearly $25 million has been paid to Amchitka workers or their survivors.

Workers with other illnesses, such as skin or prostate cancer, can apply for compensation also, but must go through a process that many Amchitka workers or survivors say is frustrating.