Rep. Teresa Leger Hernández, a New Mexico Democrat, announced a Navajo uranium miner who has faced health consequences as a result of his exposure to radiation will be her guest at President Joe Biden’s State of the Union Address March 7.
Phil Harrison was in high school when he began working in the uranium mines part-time with his father who died from lung cancer in his early 40s.
Harrison is an advocate for expanding the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, which currently doesn’t compensate people who worked in uranium mining after 1971 and developed health problems as a result.
“The U.S. government must pass the RECA amendments as soon as possible. We have already lost too many friends and family,” Harrison said. “When our people took jobs in the mines to support their families, they didn’t know they were putting themselves in danger. Now, we are struggling to pay for medical help.”
Miners were not given protective equipment such as gloves or masks.
Because of this lack of protective equipment as well as with minimal supervision, many uranium miners developed lung cancer, pulmonary fibrosis and other respiratory diseases due to radon gas exposure in the mines, a press release states.
The Navajo people were among those exposed to radioactive fallout from the Nevada bomb test site and have endured diseases such as cancer without compensation or medical benefits, the press release states.
Leger Fernández reintroduced bipartisan RECA amendments in the House.
This legislation would compensate people exposed to radiation while mining uranium or were living downwind of nuclear weapons tests.
“The federal government knowingly poisoned uranium workers as well as New Mexicans living downwind of the Trinity Test site for decades,” Leger Fernández said in the press release. “We must pass the radiation exposure compensation amendments to compensate all New Mexicans who continue to live with the effects of radiation exposure. I’m honored to have Phil Harrison join me for the State of the Union address to urge Congress to bring justice to downwinders and uranium workers.”
Downwinders impacted by the Trinity Test in New Mexico are also not eligible for compensation under RECA.
The proposed expansion of RECA includes New Mexicans as well as people in Guam, Missouri, Montana and other parts of the United States where people have been exposed to radiation as a result of federal government actions.
While the expansion passed the U.S. Senate last year, it was removed from the National Defense Authorization Act before it could reach the president’s desk.
President Joe Biden has indicated that he will sign legislation expanding RECA should it make it to his desk.
