§7384r Separate Treatment of Chronic Silicosis

Summary

Employees of the Department of Energy or its contractors who have chronic silicosis must be treated as eligible for the DOE compensation program unless the President tells Congress there is not enough reason to include them. The President has to send that statement to Congress no later than 180 days after October 30, 2000, and may include any recommendations about how to handle these cases. Congress says these workers should be considered, but it does not want this to set a general rule about silicosis from other jobs. A worker is assumed to have been exposed to silica while on the job if they spent at least 250 work days mining tunnels at a DOE test site in Nevada or Alaska for tests or experiments related to an atomic weapon. A “covered employee with chronic silicosis” means a DOE or DOE contractor worker who meets that exposure rule and has chronic silicosis. “Chronic silicosis” means a noncancer lung disease with first job exposure at least 10 years before the disease started, plus a doctor’s written diagnosis and one of these: an X‑ray read by a National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health B reader showing pneumoconiosis category 1/0 or higher, a CT or other scan showing findings consistent with silicosis, or a lung biopsy that matches silicosis.