The Way We Were

[Campbell]

I worked for Union Carbide at the Oak Ridge Gaseous Diffusion Plant(ORGDP.) We walked in that pale green uo2f2 powder and breathed low concentrations of hydrogen fluoride and fluorine and had absolutely no protective clothing....we worked in street clothing. I only worked there about ten years before I transferred to the computing center. Most of the guys I worked with in the cascade operations stayed until they retired and they've died with everything from lung cancer to Parkinsons. Nearly all of them qualified for the $150K settlement from the DOL and many of them collected twice that amount for two different ailments which were a result of their exposure. Now the entire process has been gradually decontaminated and demolished at a cost of ten times what it cost to build the place.....'course in 1943,44 a billion dollars went a long way.

In the early 1970's for the first time all the employees there were issued film badges to measure exposure and effective protective clothing was issued... thanks to the new regulators OSHA and the EPA.

A company doesn't give a damn about anything but bottom line profit and unless they are forced to protect their employees from harm they won't and they couldn't care less about toxic byproducts from their processes. Did anyone see the movies "Silkwood" and "Erin Brockovich?" That stuff really happened. Corporations qualify as cold blooded killers if they're allowed to police their own activities. Plus...even worse they will fight for years denying that they're ever harmed anyone. They'll literally spend more money lying about things they've done which harmed workers than if they had gone ahead and paid damages. Any kind of negative news reports about them gives the corporation officials bleeding ulcers.