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Best Practices in Workplace Surveillance
USDOE Former Worker Medical Monitoring Program, 2001
Tim K. Takaro, Lew Pepper, Knut Ringen, Steven Markowitz, Laurie
Welch, David Adcock, Eula Bingham, Doug Dasher, Laurence Fourtes, Jim
Ruttenber, Brian Schwartz, and Kitty Taimi
The Former Workers Program was created at the Department
of Energy in 1993 to meet a Congressional request to evaluate the
long-range health conditions of employees who, as a result of their
employment at DOE sites, may be at significant risk for health
problems. The key objective has been to provide these former workers
with medical evaluations to determine whether workers have experienced
significant risk due to workplace exposure to hazards. This
determination has been made through twelve pilot programs established
at eleven DOE sites across the country.
Former Worker Programs are designed and implemented with
established methods to identify populations at risk, and validated
medical screening procedures to identify health problems. As a result
of the research and screening procedures, the programs have
characterized former employees and the health hazards they faced at
DOE sites more specifically and completely than ever before. Each
program site has involved a large and diverse group of stakeholders
that includes university groups, clinics, labor unions and
organizations, community members as well as the workers themselves.
Outreach efforts, screening procedures, and education and awareness
campaigns receive both community and media attention and accolades.
The Programs were instrumental in providing data to support the
establishment of the Energy Employees Occupational Illness
Compensation Program Act of 2000.
Over 250,000 workers have been identified with potentially
hazardous exposures from past work at USDOE sites. A total of 11,000
have been examined to date. Of these 6,949 that have received results
letters, and 2,864 are likely to have work related health problems
(41.2%). At most sites these are mainly due to asbestos and beryllium
disease along with noise induced hearing loss. The purpose of this
presentation is to briefly describe the general characteristics of the
surveillance program, the overall response to the program and give
significant results to date.
PDF Document (341 KB)
NOTE: This document is provided for historical purposes only.