PADUCAH, Ky. -- Workers at a Paducah plant that processes uranium for the U.S. Department of Energy may have been exposed to low-level radiation, toxic chemicals and asbestos before the advent of stringent safety rules in 1980.

Similar lax safety procedures were in place in plants in Oak Ridge, Tenn., and Portsmouth, Ohio, where Paducah's uranium was enriched to make atomic weapons.

Now the Department of Energy is trying to locate the workers to see if health problems have arisen as a result of their work environment.

The Paducah gaseous diffusion plant was completed in 1954. Some of the early workers came from Sikeston, Charleston, New Madrid and Portageville in Missouri, and from Vienna, Murphysboro and Anna in Illinois.

The basic reason for the surveillance is to speed the detection of diseases, says Jim Chesnut, a former worker at the Paducah plant.

"It takes so long for some of these things to show up in the human body ... that with medical screening somebody will be found with something that has not yet been detected and can be treated for it."

Chesnut now is the retiree representative with the Worker Health Protection Program of the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers International Union.

The surveillance program began in 1993 when Congress instructed the DOE to screen people who had worked at the three plants as long as six months. The Tennessee and Ohio workers exposed to higher levels of radiation were looked at initially. Now the program has been extended to the Paducah plant.

Many of the diseases the work environment was capable of producing -- asbestosis, liver disease, kidney disease, lung disease and even hearing disorders -- take many years to appear. The average number of years for asbestosis to appear after exposure is 33 years.

About 10 former workers at the other plants have been diagnosed with asbestosis, which is incurable, and already have received awards.

Chesnut said the DOE has not allocated any money for treatment, but awards have been made through workman's compensation and class action lawsuits.

As many as 2,000 former workers at the Paducah plant may have been affected. Workers employed at the plant after 1980 are not excluded from the screening. The plant is still in operation.

The Paducah plant has always been run by private companies but is owned by the DOE. It consists of six buildings. The two largest cover 26 acres and are 100 feet high.

Chesnut said many people have hearing losses because of the high volume of noise in the buildings. He said he has spoken to a number of former workers who have had prostate cancer.

The screenings will be conducted in Paducah but cases will be evaluated by the project committee in New York. The committee is led by Dr. Steven Markowitz of Queens College in New York, by MIT physicist Mark Griffon and by Sylvia Keiding, who represents the union.

Medical screenings of the former workers will begin Wednesday in Paducah. Chesnut, who has asthma, is going in for an evaluation, later this month.

Who to call

To receive information about the project, call (888) 241-1199. Information about individual cases may be left on an answering machine.