Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #117369

Ken Silver, DSc, SM, Department of Environmental Health, East Tennessee State University, PO Box 70682, Johnson City, TN 37614, 423-439-4542, silver@etsu.edu

Dr. Harriet Louise Hardy was a leading figure in occupational health in the United States in the late 20th century. Very early in her career she spent a year (1948) in the Occupational Health Group at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory. She continued to consult for the Atomic Energy Commission throughout her later academic career. The contemporary campaign for the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act has brought to the fore living Los Alamos retirees in whose cases of occupational illness Dr. Hardy played a pivotal role in diagnosis or case management. Each case is documented using an assemblage of historical work process information and industrial hygiene reports, contemporary medical records, and the recollections of cases and co-workers. An additional case, presumed deceased, is documented in records retrieved from an archive in Tennessee. The medicolegal histories of these cases illustrate how injustices under state workers' compensation laws necessitated an expanded federal role in compensating energy employees' illnesses. These cases also highlight difficulties and successes in implementation of the federal EEOICPA law to date, as well as special issues affecting claims for toxic substances other than beryllium under Subtitle E.

Learning Objectives: At the conclusion of this session, participants will be able to

• Identify Dr. Harriet L. Hardy as a pioneer in occupational medicine whose early career had a major emphasis on worker health issues at AEC facilities
• Recognize the historical injustices that EEOICPA is intended to remedy
• Identify special issues currently affecting claims for toxic substances under Subtitle E

Keywords: Occupational Health, History

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.