Exposed chemical workers to be compensated

PITTSBURGH, March 8 (UPI) -- Former workers at a chemical lab in Pennsylvania might be able to take advantage of a government compensation plan for exposure victims, officials said.

Jane Wagner, who worked in the lab at the former Vitro Manufacturing Co. in Canonsburg, Pa., in the 1950s, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette she did not know the tests she was running were of radioactive materials.

"We knew we were dealing with uranium, but nobody ever mentioned radiation," she said. "The bosses probably knew, but we didn't know."

Wagner learned about seven years she had breast cancer and underwent a mastectomy. Although she is cancer-free today, she might qualify for at least $150,000 in compensation payments from the federal government, the newspaper said Sunday.

The U.S. Department of Labor ruled recently that former Vitro employees would be treated as a "special exposure" group under an 8-year-old law that compensates employees at former nuclear weapons plants.

The designation allows Vitro workers or their surviving family members to receive a $150,000 lump sum payment and coverage of certain medical costs if they were employed at the plant for more than 250 days between 1942 and 1957, and if they later were diagnosed with one of 22 cancers.

The Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program was drafted during the Clinton administration and took effect in 2001.