United States Government Employees Health

During the last five decades, the U.S. government risked the lives of thousands of workers by knowingly allowing them to be exposed to dangerous levels of beryllium, a metal critical to the military, a newspaper reported Sunday. Numerous government, scientific and industry reports showed beryllium put workers in extreme danger, and hundreds of workers exposed to the metal's dust have contracted beryllium disease, an incurable and sometimes fatal lung illness, the Toledo Blade reported.

A janitor stricken after working in a Social Security building closed last fall by an outbreak of legionnaire's disease has died. Fifteen employees of the Social Security Administration offices in Richmond became ill, including Margaret Thomas, 48, the latest to die, and Rosalind Sheffield, 39, who died in September.

Alma Mosley sits alone in her cluttered house and thinks about justice. Fallen behind a chest of drawers, unreachable, is a framed certificate for work well done, illustrated with a mushroom cloud and inscribed with her husband's name: Hugh Mosley.

A four-year study by government-paid doctors that was released Monday suggests conditions at a former uranium enrichment plant in Oak Ridge caused illnesses among workers.