M E M O R A N D U M
To:Reporters and Editors
Re:irradiated mail
Da:Monday, July 1, 2002
The legislative branch's Office of Compliance is releasing a report concluding that handling irradiated mail for substantial periods of time may cause or contribute to adverse health symptoms for a number of legislative branch employees. Sen. Chuck Grassley asked for the investigation in February. He was the chief Senate author of the Congressional Accountability Act of 1995, which became law and applied 11 civil rights, labor and workplace laws to employees of the federal legislative branch. The law created the Office of Compliance for enforcement. Grassley made the following comment on the report.
"This report is valuable. First, it concludes that irradiated mail may not be harmless, as some have suggested. That's important because mail has a huge presence on Capitol Hill. A significant number of employees spend their days opening and sorting mail. Their employer, the legislative branch, owes them a safe work environment. It has to take their complaints seriously.
"In retrospect, the Senate Sergeant at Arms and its Legislative Mail Task Force may have been too quick to conclude irradiated mail was harmless, and they may not have taken employees' health concerns seriously enough. Irradiating the mail was and is a big experiment. As the Office of Compliance report points out, this is the first time a large group of employees is receiving regular exposure to irradiated mail. When irradiation began, no one really knew how employees' health would fare. Irradiating mail is an important security procedure, but we have to fully investigate its effects to ensure it doesn't present its own dangers. As this report makes clear, we still don't have all the answers.
"Second, this report underscores the value of the Office of Compliance's independent reviews of employees' workplace concerns.
"Third, I'm concerned about the report's statement that the Office of Compliance didn't receive full cooperation from the Senate Sergeant at Arms, the Office of the Attending Physician, and several federal agencies. That isn't the way the system is supposed to work. I plan to ask those departments and agencies to respond."