25. Karen Silkwood:
Karen was an American labor union
activist and chemical technician at the Kerr-McGee plant near Crescent,
Oklahoma, United States. Silkwood’s job was making plutonium pellets for
nuclear reactor fuel rods. After being hired at Kerr-McGee, Silkwood joined the
Oil, Chemical & Atomic Workers Union local and took part in a strike at the
plant. After the strike ended, she was elected to the union’s bargaining
committee and assigned to investigate health and safety issues.
She discovered what she believed
to be numerous violations of health regulations, including exposure of workers
to contamination, faulty respiratory equipment and improper storage of samples.
She also believed the lack of sufficient shower facilities could increase the
risk of employee contamination. In the summer of 1974, Silkwood testified to
the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) about these issues, alleging that safety
standards had slipped because of a production speedup which resulted in
employees being given tasks for which they were poorly trained.
She also alleged that Kerr-McGee
employees handled the fuel rods improperly and that the company falsified
inspection records. On November 5, 1974, Silkwood performed a routine
self-check and found almost 400 times the legal limit for plutonium
contamination. She was decontaminated at the plant and sent home with a testing
kit to collect urine and feces for further analysis. Oddly, though there was
plutonium on the exterior surfaces (the ones she touched) of the gloves she had
been using, the gloves did not have any holes.
This suggests the contamination
did not come from inside the glove box, but from some other source, in other
words, someone was trying to poison her. The next morning, as she headed to a
union negotiation meeting, she again tested positive for plutonium. This was
surprising because she had only performed paperwork duties that morning. She
was given a more intense decontamination.
The following day, November 7,
1974, as she entered the plant, she was found to be dangerously contaminated —
even expelling contaminated air from her lungs. A health physics team
accompanied her back to her home and found plutonium traces on several surfaces
— especially in the bathroom and the refrigerator.
The house was later stripped and
decontaminated. Silkwood, her partner and housemate were sent to Los Alamos
National Laboratory for in-depth testing to determine the extent of the
contamination in their bodies. Later that evening, Silkwood’s body was found in
her car, which had run off the road and struck a culvert. The car contained no
documents. She was pronounced dead at the scene from a “classic, one-car
sleeping-driver accident”.
--------------------------------------
Karen Gay Silkwood - ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Silkwood )
(February 19, 1946 –
November 13, 1974) was an American chemical technician and labor
union activist known for raising concerns about corporate practices
related to health and safety of workers in a nuclear facility.
She worked at
the Kerr-McGee Cimarron Fuel Fabrication Site plant
near Crescent, Oklahoma, United States. Silkwood's job was
making plutonium pellets for nuclear reactorfuel rods. She
joined the union and became an activist on behalf of issues of health
and safety at the plant as a member of the union's negotiating team, the first
woman to have that position at Kerr-McGee. In the summer of 1974, she testified
to the Atomic Energy Commission about her concerns.
For three days in November, she
was found to have high levels of contamination on her person and in her home.
While driving to a meeting that month with David Burnham, a New York Times journalist,
and Steve Wodka, an official of her union's national office, she died in a car
accident under mysterious circumstances.
Her family sued Kerr-McGee on
behalf of her estate. In what was the longest trial up until then in Oklahoma
history, the jury found Kerr-McGee liable for the plutonium contamination of
Silkwood, and awarded substantial damages. These were reduced on appeal, but
the case reached the United States Supreme Court in 1979, which
upheld the damages verdict. Before another trial took place, Kerr-McGee settled
with the estate out of court for US $1.38 million, while not admitting
liability.
Her life was featured in Silkwood (1983),
an Academy Award-nominated film based on an original screenplay
by Nora Ephron and Alice Arlen.
Early life and education
Silkwood was born
in Longview, Texas, the daughter of Merle and William Silkwood, and
raised in Nederland, Texas. She attendedLamar State
College in Beaumont.
Marriage and family
In 1965, she married William
Meadows, an oil pipeline worker, with whom she had three children. Silkwood
left her husband in 1972 and moved to Oklahoma City, where she briefly
worked as a hospital clerk.
Union activities
After being hired at Kerr-McGee in
1972, Silkwood joined the local Oil, Chemical & Atomic Workers
Union and took part in a strike at the plant. After the strike ended, she
was elected to the union's bargaining committee, the first woman to achieve
that position at the Kerr-McGee plant. She was assigned to investigate health
and safety issues. She discovered what she believed to be numerous violations
of health regulations, including exposure of workers to contamination, faulty
respiratory equipment and improper storage of samples. She believed the lack of
sufficient shower facilities could increase the risk of employee contamination.
The Oil, Chemical and Atomic
Workers Union said that "the Kerr-McGee plant had manufactured faulty fuel
rods, falsified product inspection records, and risked employee safety;"
it threatened litigation. In the summer of 1974, Silkwood testified to
the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) about having been contaminated,
alleging that safety standards had slipped because of a production speedup. She
was appearing with other union members.
On November 5, 1974, Silkwood
performed a routine self-check and found that her body contained almost 400
times the legal limit for plutonium contamination. She was decontaminated at
the plant and sent home with a testing kit to collect urine and feces for
further analysis. Although there was plutonium on the exterior surfaces (the
ones she touched) of the gloves which she had been using, the gloves did not
have any holes. This suggests the contamination had come not from inside the
glovebox, but from some other source.
The next morning, as she headed
to a union negotiation meeting, Silkwood again tested positive for plutonium,
although she had performed only paperwork duties that morning. She was given a
more intensive decontamination.
On November 7, as she entered the
plant, she was found to be dangerously contaminated, even expelling
contaminated air from her lungs. A health physics team accompanied
her back to her home and found plutonium traces on several surface, especially
in the bathroom and the refrigerator. When the house was later stripped and
decontaminated, some of her property had to be destroyed. Silkwood, her partner
Drew Stephens, and her housemate were sent to Los Alamos National
Laboratory for in-depth testing to determine the extent of the
contamination in their bodies.
Questions arose over how Silkwood
became contaminated over this three-day period. She said the contamination in
the bathroom may have occurred when she spilled her urine sample on the morning
of November 7. This was consistent with the evidence that samples she took at
home had extremely high levels of contamination, while samples taken in
"fresh" jars at the plant and at Los Alamos showed much lower
contamination.
She thought she had been contaminated
at the plant. Kerr-McGee's management said that Silkwood had contaminated
herself in order to portray the company in a negative light. According
to Richard Rashke's book, The Killing of Karen Silkwood (1981/2000),
security at the plant was so lax that workers could easily smuggle out finished
plutonium pellets. Rashke wrote that the soluble type of plutonium found in
Silkwood's body came from a production area to which she had not had access for
four months. The pellets had since been stored in the vault of the facility.
Going public
Silkwood said she had assembled
documentation for her claims, including company papers. She decided to go
public with this evidence, and contacted David Burnham, a New York Times journalist,
who was interested in her story. On November 13, 1974, Silkwood left a union
meeting at the Hub Cafe in Crescent. Another attendee of that meeting later
testified that Silkwood had a binder and a packet of documents with her at the
cafe. Silkwood got into her car and headed alone for Oklahoma City, about 30
miles (48 km) away, to meet with Burnham, the New York Times reporter,
and Steve Wodka, an official of her union's national office.
Death
Later that evening, Silkwood's
body was found in her car, which had run off the road and struck
a culvert. The car contained none of the documents she held in the Union
meeting at the Hub cafe. She was pronounced dead at the scene in what was
believed to be an accident. The trooper at the scene remembers that he found
one or two tablets of the sedative methaqualone (Quaalude) in
the car, and he remembers finding marijuana. The police report indicated
that she fell asleep at the wheel. The coroner found 0.35 milligrams of
methaqualone per 100 milliliters of blood at the time of her death — an
amount almost twice the recommended dosage for inducing drowsiness.
Some journalists have theorized
that Silkwood's car was rammed from behind by another vehicle, with the intent
to cause an accident that would result in her death.
Skid marks from Silkwood's car
were present on the road, suggesting that she was trying to get back onto the
road after being pushed from behind.
Investigators also noted damage
on the rear of Silkwood's vehicle that, according to Silkwood's friends and
family, had not been present before the accident. As the crash was entirely a
front-end collision, it did not explain the damage to the rear of her vehicle.
A microscopic examination of the rear of Silkwood's car showed paint chips that
could have come only from a rear impact by another vehicle. Silkwood's family
claimed to know of no accidents of any kind that Silkwood had had with the car,
and that the 1974 Honda Civic she was driving was new when purchased
and no insurance claims were filed on that vehicle.
Silkwood's relatives, too,
confirmed that she had taken the missing documents to the Union meeting and
placed them on the seat beside her. According to her family, she had received
several threatening phone calls very shortly before her death. Speculation
about foul play has never been substantiated.
Because of concerns about
contamination, the Atomic Energy Commission and the State Medical
Examiner requested analysis of Silkwood's organs by the Los Alamos Tissue
Analysis Program. Much of the radiation was in her lungs, suggesting that
plutonium had been inhaled. When her tissues were further examined, the second
highest deposits were found in her gastrointestinal organs.
Public suspicions led to a
federal investigation into plant security and safety. National Public
Radio reported that this investigation had found that 44 to 66 pounds of
plutonium had been misplaced at the plant.
Kerr-McGee closed its
nuclear-fuel plants in 1975. The Department of Energy (DOE) reported
the Cimarron plant as decontaminated and decommissioned in 1994.
PBS Frontline produced
the program, Nuclear Reaction, which included aspects of the Silkwood
story. Its website for the program includes "The Karen Silkwood
Story", as printed in 1995 in Los Alamos Science. The PBS program
covered the risks of nuclear energy and raised questions about corporate
accountability and responsibility.
Silkwood v. Kerr-McGee
Silkwood's father Bill and her
children filed a lawsuit against Kerr-McGee for negligence on behalf of her
estate. The trial was held in 1979 and lasted ten months, the longest to that
point in Oklahoma history. Gerry Spence was the chief attorney for
the estate; other key attorneys were Arthur Angel and James Ikard; William Paul
was the chief attorney for Kerr-McGee. The estate presented evidence that the
autopsy proved Silkwood was contaminated with plutonium at her death. To prove
that the contamination was sustained at the plant, evidence was given by a
series of witnesses who were former employees of the facility.
The defense relied on the expert
witness Dr. George Voelz, a top-level scientist at Los Alamos. Voelz
said that he believed the contamination in Silkwood's body was within legal
standards. The defense later proposed that Silkwood was a troublemaker, who might
have poisoned herself. Following the summation arguments, Judge Frank Theis
told the jury, "If you find that the damage to the person or property of
Karen Silkwood resulted from the operation of this plant, Kerr-McGee is
liable."
The jury rendered its verdict of
US $505,000 in damages and US $10,000,000 in punitive damages.
On appeal in federal court, the judgment was reduced to US $5,000,
the estimated value of Silkwood's losses in property at her rental house, and
reversing the award of punitive damages. In 1984, the U.S. Supreme
Court restored the original verdict, in Silkwood v. Kerr-McGee Corp. 464
US 238 (1984), ruling that "the NRC's exclusive authority to set safety
standards did not foreclose the use of state tort remedies." Although
suggesting it would appeal on other grounds, Kerr-McGee settled out of court
for US $1.38 million, admitting no liability.
According to Richard L. Rashke's
book, The Killing of Karen Silkwood (2000), investigators of
Silkwood's death, as well as the Kerr-McGee corporation and their Cimarron
plant, received death threats. One of the investigators disappeared under
mysterious circumstances. One of the witnesses
committed suicide shortly before she was to testify against the
Kerr-McGee Corporation about the alleged happenings at the plant. Rashke
wrote that the Silkwood family's legal team were followed, threatened with
violence, and physically assaulted.
He suggested that the 44 pounds
of plutonium missing from the plant had been stolen by a secret
underground plutonium-smuggling ring, in which many government agencies,
including the highest levels of government and international intelligence
agencies CIA, MI5, Israeli Mossad, and a shadowy group
of Iranians were involved. The book says that the United States
government covered up many details about Silkwood's death, and allegedly
carried out her assassination.
Representation in other media
The 1983 film Silkwood is
an account of Silkwood's life and the events resulting from her activism, based
on an original screenplay written by Nora Ephron and Alice
Arlen. Meryl Streep played the title role and was nominated for an
Academy Award and a BAFTA.Cher played Karen's best friend, Dolly, and was
nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award. Mike
Nichols was nominated for Best Director. Ephron and Arlen were nominated
for Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen. In recent years,
popular culture has referenced Silkwood. For instance, In the 3rd season, 9th
episode of NBC sitcom 30 Rock titled Retreat to Move Forward, Jenna mentions
taking a “Silkwood Shower” to cleanse herself after having a misguided tryst
with a co-worker.
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