COBURG, Ore. – In the 1960s, Jim Lewis worked at Colorado’s Rocky Flats nuclear power plant.
“At that plant,” Lewis said, “we made atomic bombs.”
After three months working as a janitor, he ended up on the assembly line.
That’s where Lewis said he was exposed to radiation.
“Sometimes they have a problem and you have a blow back,” he said. “What that means is all of the air comes out of there and then you got it all over you.”
Workers wore protective gear, but Lewis said blow backs happened at least 6 times in the 5 years he worked at the plant.
“The time from the 60s into the 90s,” he said, “is when I started getting the cancers.”
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The call was about Nuclear Care Partners which started operating in Oregon last summer.
The company works with former Department of Energy Workers who have been diagnosed with work-related illnesses.
“Our mission is just to find these people, let them know that they have a friend, they have somebody that will guide them through this process,” said Mary Hansen, a nurse with Nuclear Care Partners.
Read more at ‘We made atomic bombs’: Nuclear Care Partners helps with aftermath of workplace radiation
