Welcome to the Office of Health & Safety

The Office of Health and Safety establishes worker safety and health requirements and expectations for the Department to ensure protection of workers from the hazards associated with Department operations. Our Office conducts health studies to determine worker and public health effects from exposure to hazardous materials associated with Department operations and supports international health studies and programs. We implement medical surveillance and screening programs for current and former workers and support the Department of Labor in the implementation of the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act (EEOICPA). Additionally, our Office provides assistance to Headquarters and field elements in implementation of policy and resolving worker safety and health issues.

Current Worker Programs

Occupational and Environmental Medicine

The DOE Occupational and Environmental Medicine (OEM) Program provides policy, guidance, and occupational medicine expert consultation to the more than 30 DOE Site Occupational Medicine Programs. The Site Occupational Medicine Programs serve the more than 140,000 current DOE Federal and Contractor workers nationwide. To help ensure these workers are at their most fit to perform the United States' most important science, energy. and nuclear work, the site occupational medicine programs conduct regular and as-needed medical evaluations to ensure any work exposures are not affecting their health, encourage Wellness and Safety through Health Promotion and Educational activities including pandemic planning, illness and injury prevention programs, and inter-collegial communications among the more than 500 healthcare providers in the DOE Complex. One important health monitoring program is related to the cold-warriors who produced the nuclear weapons during the first 4 decades of the nuclear age, the beryllium-affected workers. Beryllium was used to build the nuclear weapons, and exposure to dust containing beryllium compounds, caused some workers to develop health problems. DOE, in collaboration with the Department of Labor, provides these brave men and women with special workers' compensation. Workers, who find themselves with personal or professional stressors that could affect their work, are encouraged to participate in Employee Assistance Programs at each of the DOE sites. When workers leave DOE employment, they are eligible to have health monitoring through the Former Worker Medical Screening Program.

Worker Health and Safety Policy

DOE Worker Safety and Health Policies and Regulations are developed and implemented to ensure the DOE workforce conducts work safely and productively. Important major regulations covering workers are 10 CFR 851 Worker Safety and Health Program and 10 CFR 850 Chronic Beryllium Disease Prevention Program. Other regulations such as 10 CFR 707 Workplace Substance Abuse Program are targeted toward ensuring that nuclear weapons workers are not impaired on the job. A widely diverse professional group including Ph.D.-level industrial hygienists, nuclear and radiological safety professionals, along with industrial safety experts develop and implement the important DOE safety and health regulations.

Health Studies: Domestic

The health status of DOE's current workers is tracked through the Illness and Injury Prevention Program; a program of health surveillance designed to study trends and patterns of injury or illness among current workers and make recommendations on possible interventions if a trend or pattern indicating a potential work-induced health issue is identified. Through retrospective studies of the records of the more than 600,000 people who have worked in the nuclear energy field since the Manhattan Project began, DOE's Department of Health and Human Services partners - NIOSH, ATSDR, and NCEH - help identify whether certain exposures or jobs in the past may have affected workers or members of communities surrounding DOE over the long term.

Health Studies: International

DOE engages in the conduct of international health studies that provide new knowledge and information about the human response to ionizing radiation in the workplace or people exposed in communities as a result of nuclear accidents. Many thousands of people, who survived the instantaneous radiation exposures from the nuclear weapons explosions over Nagasaki and Hiroshima, were exposed to high levels of radiation over a short time. Other countries such as Russia where nuclear weapons workers built atomic weapons had historically higher levels of radiation exposure than DOE workers. And, residents of the Marshall Islands were exposed to fallout from nuclear weapons tests in the South Pacific. DOE Office of Health and Safety supports studies of the Japanese A-Bomb survivors, the Russian nuclear weapons workers at Mayak and in the community around Mayak, and provides healthcare and environmental monitoring to the surviving people of the Marshall Islands. The International Studies help the national and international radiation standards setting organizations better understand exposure effects and how to set radiation exposure standards.

Voluntary Protection Program DOE assists organizations around the complex to undergo evaluation to obtain Voluntary Protection Program (VPP) status. VPP Star status is conferred up organizations that meet the highest standards of safety and health performance.

Former Worker Programs

When workers retire or leave employment with DOE, they all become eligible to have medical screening through the Former Worker Medical Screening Program to determine if they might have a latent health effect from work done at DOE during their careers. Persons who worked with radiation sources and develop certain cancers may be eligible for special workers compensation. Persons whose work at DOE results in them being diagnosed as having silicosis, chronic beryllium disease, or asbestosis may also be eligible for special workers compensation under the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act (EEOICPA).

Patricia R. Worthington, Director, Office of Health and Safety
Bill R. McArthur, Acting Deputy Director, Office of Health and Safety