Serious flaws exist in one of the standards used to determine whether former Rocky Flats workers with cancer were sickened by dangerous levels of radiation at the nuclear weapons plant, an official review found.

The review, ordered by the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, details 21 problems with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health report that currently calculates levels of worker exposure.

Rocky Flats Steelworkers' Union leader Tony DeMaiori said the review is more ammunition for a union petition alleging that contamination records at the plant are so inaccurate that workers can't prove radiation caused their illnesses.

The accuracy of the Rocky Flats "site profile" is vital because it is used by NIOSH to determine if a radiation dose was high enough to cause the cancer and thus qualify the worker for federal medical care and other compensation.

Larry Elliot, who runs the dose reconstruction program for NIOSH, said his agency welcomes the review and has agreed to address many of its criticisms.

The site profile is based on everyday operations at Rocky Flats and is used to estimate exposures when dosage records for an individual are unavailable.

The review, conducted by S. Cohen and Associates of Virginia, found the following deficiencies in the site profile:

• A failure to account for higher exposures to parts of the body not near dosimeters worn on worker lapels.

• A high number of workers' exposure monitoring records where sections were left blank.

• Incorrect calculations used to determine the amount of plutonium lodged in the lungs.

The union petition filed with NIOSH asks for all Rocky Flats workers with 22 types of cancer listed in the compensation law to be grandfathered into the compensation program without having to prove the cause.

One problem with calculating worker exposure, cited by the review and the union petition, is an incorrect assumption on the size of plutonium particles lodged in the body - which could throw off dosages by a factor of 10.

DeMaiori cited one worker with breast cancer who was denied compensation because she had a 46 percent chance instead of 50 percent chance that the job caused her disease. Changing the dose by a factor of 10 could change the decision on whether she is eligible for aid.

In addition, the review indicates the site profile doesn't adequately count radiation from a type of plutonium heated to a high temperature. The heating makes the plutonium very insoluble, so it stays hidden, irradiating the body internally.

The union contends the effects of the heated plutonium may not show up in tests until 20 years later.

"We have a whole bunch of people with a dose who don't know it," DeMaiori said.

As a result, the union petition alleges, there's no way to know which workers were contaminated with this type of plutonium.

DeMaiori said the law requires NIOSH to act on the Rocky Flats petition within 180 days, or by last August. But NIOSH has given itself repeated extensions, which DeMaiori considers illegal.

"We've got people dying," while waiting for help paying for medical care, DeMaiori said.

So far, half of the more than 2,300 sick Rocky Flats workers have been denied compensation and were told their cancers and other illnesses are unrelated to years of working in some of the country's most dangerous industrial buildings at the now-demolished atomic bomb plant 16 miles northwest of downtown Denver. Hundreds more wait for responses.

To qualify for aid, the workers must prove the level and degree of their contamination.

NIOSH is collecting employee records and calculating radiation dosages on the cancer cases. Where it can't find records, it uses general contamination information collected in the Rocky Flats site profile to make radiation dosage estimates.

When the board ordered the review of the site profile, it wrote: "It has become clearer that primary sources of occupational dose data at the Department of Energy sites may be more suspect and less reliable as reviews go back further in time."

As a result, the board wrote, more employees' dosages are being merely estimated based on what the site profile reveals about general contamination at the plant.

That infuriates DeMaiori. "The law says if they can't successfully reconstruct the dose, they have to grant (the petition)," he said. Estimating "is not the intent of the law," he added.

The 21 issues raised by Cohen in its review of the site profile will be discussed in a meeting with NIOSH, Cohen and several board members on Feb. 27, said John Mauro, Cohen's project manager.

Anything unresolved will be considered by the full board at a meeting in Denver April 25-27 and could affect the board's decision on the petition at that same meeting.

First NIOSH will make a recommendation on the petition, then the board and, finally, the secretary of labor.

Mauro said some of the most important issues raised by his team include the heated plutonium, the large number of blanks in the records and zeroes where the counting equipment of the time wasn't sufficiently sensitive.

In addition, one of the most basic methods used by Rocky Flats to measure contamination was off, Mauro said. The body counter measured radiation from americium leaving the body and used that figure to calculate the amount of otherwise undetectable plutonium in the body. But the ratio between americium and plutonium varies, Mauro said.

According to the review, there is also evidence that Rocky Flats routinely stored control dosimeters in contaminated locations.

The amount of background radiation on these control dosimeters was then deducted from the amounts on worker dosimeters. Mauro said one way to address this would be to not deduct the alleged background level.

Such questions about the reliability of the records is a concern for Joseph Fitzgerald, who wrote the Cohen report. Workers have said they had levels of exposure that was not recorded, he noted.

"Was there any management action that would have made the data not sound?" Fitzgerald asked.

The site profile also failed to address doses from neptunium, thorium, curium, tritium and two types of uranium, according to the review. Nor did it address contamination from "routine and episodic airborne releases" of radiation possibly inhaled by workers outdoors.

The site profile considered contamination from breathing radioactive soil blown into the air only at the worst dumping site at Rocky Flats, but not other dumps.

The Cohen review also indicates the site profile did not address contamination occurring after 1992 during the demolition and decontamination of the plant.

Compensation program

• Applied: More than 2,300 sick Rocky Flats workers have applied for compensation on the grounds that their illnesses were caused by radiation or toxic chemicals at the now-defunct nuclear weapons plant.

• Payouts: About 300 to 400 workers have been paid $61 million, but 1,105 have been denied. The rest are waiting for decisions six years after the program began.

• Cases: There are 1,106 Rocky Flats cancer cases for which the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health is trying to calculate radiation contamination. Of these, 355 have been denied, 136 approved.

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