Washington - Thousands of workers were deceived about their exposure to highly radioactive substances including plutonium in a federally-owned plant used to produce material for nuclear weapons, the Washington Post reported yesterday. Citing court documents, plant records and interviews with current and former workers, the Post said that "contractors buried the facts about the plutonium contamination" in reports filed in archives.
Highly radioactive, as little as a millionth of an ounce of ingested plutonium may cause cancer. Workers at Kentucky's Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant were unwittingly exposed to the toxic materials from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s, the Post said.