Seven months after nine Hanford workers were exposed to chemical fumes from an explosion, attempts to monitor their health and discover any effects of their exposure remain snared in a tangle of distrust, miscommunication and confusion.

The dust has long settled since the May 14 explosion at the Plutonium Finishing Plant. Much of the mess is cleaned up. But the workers say their lives remain in disarray in spite of a search for answers that stretches from Hanford to Seattle to Texas to California to Pittsburgh.

They believe whatever trust they had in the Hanford system has been betrayed. And they say their co-workers shun and harass them.

Darlene Good, a Fluor Daniel Hanford radiological control technician and 15-year veteran on the site, said she didn't want anything more than to be assured she wouldn't face long-term health problems.

That still hasn't happened, despite cross-country flights seeking medical help. The fears and anxieties remain.

And prestigious doctors, research teams and universities only recently ended the jockeying to decide what tests are most likely to give the answers the nine workers have pleaded for.

That's the picture painted by the two of the nine workers who agreed to talk with the Herald. The other seven wouldn't respond to a variety of attempts over several months to arrange interviews.

One of those seven once agreed to meet with a Herald reporter, but only in a Richland park, where he kept glancing over his shoulder for someone he thought might have been spying on the meeting. He has since cut off any contact with the Herald and will not talk further.

Sometime in January, when a Galveston, Texas, research team arrives in the Tri-Cities to begin chromosome studies that will take another three to six months, some of the issues may begin to be resolved.

But it's clear that resolution will remain a lengthy and laborious process.

"The lack of trust has made it harder to get things done faster," said Jon Brock, chairman of the Hanford Joint Council for Employee Concerns, which has tried to help.

Intervention by U.S. Sen. Patty Murray and Energy Secretary Federico Pena has done little to speed the process.

Murray intervened with Pena after learning four of the nine had become so impatient that on Oct. 4, they flew to Galveston on their own for medical checks by someone they trusted.

They arrived at the University of Texas Medical Branch about 4 1/2 months after the explosion. But Fluor Daniel Hanford, Hanford's lead contractor for the Department of Energy, soon ordered them to return, saying arrangements and medical protocols for testing had not yet been hammered out.

The four refused and didn't return for several days until a round of clinical checks was done.

In the two months since, agreements have been reached on medical test protocols. And the other five workers have undergone initial checks at Galveston.

The delays mean more tests are needed to check the workers thoroughly, said William Au, the University of Texas researcher in charge of the tests.

Every step to get to this point appears to have been difficult. Workers and officials are guarded when they talk about the health issues. Medical and employee confidentiality rules come into play. And different people have markedly different views of the same events.

Indications are that symptoms and the sought-after medical checks may differ for the nine. They and health officials did not want to discuss individual symptoms in detail, other than to say they still suffer some.

Just after the explosion, the workers reported headaches, sore throats and strange tastes in their mouths. A couple reported skin rashes.

The officially reported cause is fumes they were exposed to after a mixture of nitric acid and hydroxylamine nitrates exploded in a PFP chemical tank.

Eight of the workers were in a crew of Fluor Daniel Northwest employees on a dinner break in a trailer just outside the PFP building.

They heard about the explosion over a radio, said one of the workers, who requested anonymity. Then a public address announcement told workers to report to Room 104 across the complex so supervisors could account for everyone.

Then came a series of conflicting orders to go to Room 104 or to stay put. Ultimately, the crew ended up unintentionally walking through the fumes.

As they walked, some tasted "something metallic, rustlike," the worker said.

In Room 104, the crew was joined by Good, who also was exposed to the fumes.

The exposed people wanted to be taken to Kadlec Medical Center in Richland soon after arriving at Room 104, said Good and the other worker.

But the massive confusion of that evening resulted in no decision until after midnight. Then they were told to drive themselves to Kadlec.

There, the workers asked for blood and urine tests but received none because Hanford and emergency room medical personnel did not believe such tests were needed.

That was the beginning of their loss of faith in the Hanford medical establishment, said the two interviewed workers. Hanford officials agree they botched that contact, along with almost everything else in the explosion's aftermath.

"We felt there was a cover-up. We wanted independent medical checks," one worker said.

During the next month, some medical checks were done at the Hanford Environmental Health Foundation in Richland or at Harborview Medical Center or Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle.

Meanwhile, another glitch fueled workers' growing suspicions. Nasal smears - swab samples taken from nostrils to check for contamination - were taken the night of the explosion. But a misunderstanding resulted in a monthlong delay in getting those smears tested.

By then, mistrust was so great, Fluor Daniel and the Department of Energy offered to let the workers pick their own medical experts, with Fluor to foot the bill. Fluor sent the workers a letter confirming that offer June 12.

Fluor included a list of 55 clinics affiliated with hospitals or universities and told the workers to pick where they wanted to be checked. The Association of Occupational and Environmental Clinics provided the list, said Gordon Beecher, Fluor's director of human resources.

In June, one worker went to one of the listed clinics at the University of California at Irvine for some tests. The outcome of that visit remains confidential.

But most of the exposed workers had so little trust in Fluor, DOE and HEHF, they would not accept any clinic listed, the interviewed workers said.

Consequently, the workers went to the Internet to hunt for a clinic off the list. They settled on the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston and Au, an expert in environmental and genetic toxicology. He has studied chemical exposures in the petroleum industry and radioactive exposures from uranium mining.

Meanwhile in July, some - but not all - of the exposed workers approached the Joint Council for Resolving Employee Concerns for help. The council became formally involved in early August, said Brock, the council chairman. The council had been watching the polarization from afar and thought it could help, he said.

Some workers wanted the council involved, and some did not, Brock said. He declined to say how many are dealing with the council, other than the number is "significant." Any benefits derived from the council's participation will extend to all, he said.

Meanwhile, the workers asked Fluor Daniel Northwest in late July to send them to Galveston.

Fluor Northwest called the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston and found the workers had picked a research department, not an occupational medicine department, Beecher said.

"That's when the red flags went up," he said.

Fluor Northwest tried to obtain more information about the Galveston facility, but it was unresponsive, Beecher said.

Meanwhile, the joint council did not object to the Galveston facility, but it did not know anything about it. And it decided it needed an expert to deal with complex scientific and medical issues.

That started a three-week nationwide search that settled on Dr. Marc Schenker, chairman of the department of epidemiology and preventive medicine at the University of California at Davis.

Schenker reviewed the workers' medical histories and contacted Galveston in August. But he was unsuccessful in getting the information he wanted, Beecher said.

Schenker declined to be interviewed for this story, citing confidentiality concerns.

Au said his department tried to accommodate Fluor Northwest and Schenker.

"We were not unresponsive. We were not accepting what Fluor Daniel wanted to do, which was a very limited evaluation of the workers," Au said.

And while Au is not a medical doctor, he said his study team includes three physicians - a specialist in preventive and internal medicine, an occupational health doctor and a radiologist.

September rolled around.

Schenker recommended the workers go to the University of Pittburgh's School of Public Health because it was equipped to tackle a wide range of tests immediately, Brock said. But the workers trusted Au's team.

Meanwhile, Pena wrote to the workers Sept. 19 that the medical check issue is "on a fast track." He noted Fluor agreed to pay for medical expenses "as approved by the medical adviser."

Pena also wrote that "use of the (joint council) process is strictly voluntary."

By late September, Schenker and Au began discussing how to conduct the tests but at first appeared far apart.

Au said his team wanted to do clinical and genetic tests. Clinical tests look at blood, body tissue and organs for short-term effects such as respiratory problems.

But those tests won't tell about exposure-related health problems that could show up years later, Au said. Exposure to radioactive and nonradioactive chemicals can damage a person's chromosomes, which could lead to cancer, he said.

Au said Fluor originally wanted the Galveston facility to do solely clinical tests with no genetic tests. Au's team balked. Fluor returned with a proposal for clinical and some genetic tests, which Au contended was inadequate.

Then Fluor returned with a proposal for clinical tests and an expanded group of genetic tests, which the Galveston team reluctantly accepted, Au said.

"We decided not to fight any longer because time is not on our side," he said.

Brock characterized the talks between Schenker and Au differently. Brock said that once they "got to talking doctor to doctor, ... then they worked together well."

Brock said the Galveston team originally had not been briefed thoroughly enough about the nature of the PFP accident to prepare the proper exams.

"What we were concerned about with Galveston - or anywhere else - is that the exams be complete and done with quality assured," Brock said.

Au agreed his team initially was not briefed thoroughly.

Also, the Texas team's whole body counter - a device that measures radiation emitted by radioactive substances inside a person - needed a complicated recalibration to handle the PFP workers, which also occupied talks between Schenker and Au.

As Fluor, the joint council and the Galveston team discussed arrangements and protocols, four workers decided they had waited long enough. That's when they flew to Galveston and spent several days there being tested.

Beecher said no disciplinary action is planned, though the four disregarded an order to return. The workers' stay at Galveston was classified as paid convalescence time, he said.

That was disputed by a worker who desired anonymity, who said he did not get paid. And he said he was laid off shortly afterward.

Fluor came back to him by the end of October and said the layoff was a misunderstanding - Fluor thought he wanted to leave. Fluor then offered him a job.

The worker does not believe that and is thinking over the offer but is skeptical about returning.

The other five flew to Galveston in late October - after arrangements and protocols were hammered out. Au declined to discuss preliminary findings, citing patient confidentiality.

Since the October visits, plans have been agreed upon for Au to conduct the genetic testing.

A major plank is setting up a control group of Hanford workers with similar ages, genders, smoking habits and other characteristics but who were not exposed to the fumes.

Then, Au is to come to Hanford in January to supervise blood sampling for the chromosome studies.

The results may create more concerns or at last some real assurance. But what by then will be a yearlong process seems unlikely to restore the workers' faith in Hanford's system of caring for workers. As Good summed it up, "I've always defended Hanford when I'd go to places like Seattle. Now I wouldn't defend Hanford to anybody."