EEOICPA: Covered Illnesses

This page lists the 22 Specified Cancers covered by the Special Exposure Cohort (SEC) classes of the EEOICPA, as well as various other illnesses covered by the Act. Each listing links to a separate page that describes the illness in more detail and provides examples of how it is understood under the EEOICPA.

We have also included a video the bottom of the page in which Hugh Stephens, Esq. describes how these cancers are related to having worked in the Atomic Weapons Industry and how they might be covered by the EEOICPA.

Special Exposure Cohort(SEC)

The Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act (EEOICPA) has established a class of Covered Employee known as the Special Exposure Cohort (SEC). The absence of reliable historic radiation dose information (accurate dosimeter data, for example) often requires the establishment of a Special Exposure Cohort, or a group of employees whose claims are subject to a streamlined procedure. The SEC establishes a relaxed causation standard and an efficiency procedure in the place of the more rigorous standard Dose Reconstruction procedure, where a sufficiently accurate estimate of radiation dose cannot be calculated. Because of the inability of the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), and its health physicists, to accurately estimate radiation dose, the Department of Labor (DOL) generally requires potentially qualified claimants to establish 250 days of site presence at the relevant facility and one of the 22 specified cancers below. 

From the Department of Labor website:

If a claimant qualifies for inclusion in a SEC class, the claimant recieves compensation for cancers caused by exposures to radiation without the completion of a radiation dose reconstruction by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and without a determination by the Department of Labor’s Division of Energy Employees Occupational Illness compensation (DEEOIC) of the probability of causation (PoC).

To qualify for compensation as a member of an SEC class, a covered employee must have worked for a specified period of time at an SEC work site and must have developed at least one of 22 “specified cancers.” 

22 Specified Cancers:

1- Bone cancer

2- Renal Cancer

3- Leukemia (other than chronic lymphocytic leukemia) provided the the onset of the disease was at least two years after initial exposure.

4- Lung cancer (other than in situ lung cancer that is discovered during or after a post-mortem exam)

5- Multiple myeloma provided onset was at least 5 years after the initial exposure

6- Lymphomas (other than Hodgkin’s disease) provided onset was at least 5 years after the initial exposure

Primary cancer of the following (provided onset was at least 5 years after the initial exposure):

7- bile ducts

8- brain (malignancies only, not including intracranial endocrine glands and other parts of the central nervous system)

9- breast, male

10- breast, female

11– colon (including rectal cancer)

12- esophagus

13- gall bladder

14- liver (except if cirrhosis or hepatitis B is indicated)

15– ovary

16- pancreas

17- pharynx (including the soft palate, back of the mouth, base of the tongue, and the tonsils)

18- salivary glands

19- small intestine

20- stomach

21- thyroid

22-urinary bladder (including ureter and urethra)

Video

Hugh Stephens, Esq. explains how the various cancers listed above, if contracted after having worked at any of the Atomic Weapons Employer and Department of Energy facilities listed on our EEOICPA Facilities page, may make a former Worker eligible for compensation under the EEOICPA:

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EEOICPA CLAIMS

If you or your parent worked any of the DOE or AWE facilities listed on this website and became ill, you may be entitled to compensation of up to $400K plus medical benefits from the US Department of Labor.

Call EEOICPA Counsel Hugh Stephens at 1-800-548-4494, email hstephens@stephensstephens.com, or fill out the form below whether or not you have already filed a claim and even if your claim has been accepted or denied.

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