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NASA Contractor Fired for Blowing Whistle
TOTKChief writes "NASA Watch reported on this the other day, but now the Huntsville Times has dug into the firing of a NASA contractor charged with radiation safety at Marshall Space Flight Center. NASA is so serious about safety and redundancy that they're sending two probes nearly simultaneously to Mars, but it's apparent here that they don't give a rip about the safety of their employees."
Hmm. Perhaps someone should develop an "anonymous tip" model for companies to use that allows "double blind" notification of potential problems. Along with training to attempt to minimize abuse of the system, this could help the small-time whistleblower keep from getting fired.
Currently, though IANAL, IIRC there are laws already on the books that make it illegal to fire someone for being a whistleblower. There are certainly some laws regarding OSHA standards, according the the training I just recieved. Unfortunately, this does nothing to help the guy who, despite successfully suing to get his job back, now has to work in a negative environment, as will often happen in those companies that have enough to hide to want to fire whistleblowers.
Heck, I've been warned not to spread around our OSHA violations at work...
-cajun
he was fired by AJT not by NASA. in any event, if youre company is dependant on NASA and some employee complains to them, what are you expected to do ? he should have simply kept protesting internally instead of phoning the inspector general at NASA which ius what he did.
For those who don't know, safety is always spelled with a capital S in and around NASA. Their homage to this sacred cow -- mandatory monthly meetings with cliff-hanger videos that make the American Red Cross look like Cannes Film Festival triumphants, monthly inspections by overbearing site safety managers, some inane safety tip in email at least weekly from same -- borders on asinine.
If AJT doesn't get a sound smacking, there's probably a rat somewhere in the chain of their contract.
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This all sounds a bit excessive. How big was this whistle?
--Giving to trolls for the benefit of us all
An anonymous double-blind system would be great but if we look at the world we live in, I think that the whistleblower needs to have some sort of accountability, if even only to very restricted set of eyes. Otherwise, there'd be nothing to stop people from anonymously blowing the whistle maliciously. "Whoops, did your chemical plant get searched again? That's odd, our chemical plant never gets searched.'
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- most people have never heard of the Cassini, launched to Saturn in October 1997 and carrying 34.7 kg of plutonium, a substance so carcinogenic that 1/1,000,000th of a gram will give you cancer;
- therefore most people do not know that an explosion of this ship in the atmosphere would give cancer to tens of millions of people (depending on where it was when it blew up) as well as disrupting a number of ecosystems;
- the press has been surprisingly nonchalant about future plutonium-bearing missions, including ones to the Outer Solar System like the Comet Nucleus Mission carrying 25.5 kilograms of plutonium (2002 launch date) and the Pluto Flyby carrying 25.5 kilograms of plutonium (2003 launch date); missions to Mars by the Mars SR in 2007 & 2009 with a total of 6.5 kilograms of plutonium; and missions to the moon by the Network in 2001 and 2002 with total of 9 kilograms of plutonium.
Furthermore, I don't think people are relating these future dates to the Challenger, which proceeded in spite of internal warnings about safety issues, or to the two recent Mars satellites, one of which cleared numerous levels of NASA management in spite of including calculations based on the metric inch.Maybe people in general just find it comforting to believe that the people in charge claiming to know what they're doing do in fact know what they're doing. Certainly evidence is amassing to the contrary. I'm sorry if this sounds like flamebait, but i'm sure we all have pet issues we can point to; elimination of dissent happens to be one of mine. Not very democratic, IMHO....
So that's Nasa's plan: give cancer to the Martians so they'll be begging for mercy when we send a manned ship.
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
Actually it appears you are trolling, but I'll bite anyway (its late :) ).
1) I have heard of Cassini, it is an intersting exploration probe of the Saturn system. As an aside where do you get your Pu toxicity data? Here's a link to a paper on the subject by Bernard Cohen. Do you have information from a radiation health researcher to back your claims?
2) In order to expolore the outer solar system there are good reasons to use plutonium as a power source (in an RTG, Radioisotope Thermal Generator). It is compact (low mass/energy), long lived, and reliable. Other possible power sources have inherently serious problems.
3) Also they do contain the Pu in many layers of protection in case of an accidental reentry to prevnt the release of the Pu in the atmosphere. Perhaps the press has been "nonchalant" because the danger is miniscule and only the extremists are upset by a non-existant danger.
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Wasn't NASA concerned about safety after the space shuttle exploded? Was that just a temporary concern until people "forgot" about that little episode? Now that it's out of everyone's mind, it's business as usual? How typical.
-- The fight's not over, until the winner is tired.
Sigh. He was responsible for radiation safety. He would be fired as well if he had reported it through the chain of command, and they had sat on it. In those roles, you're supposed to go to the person that has the biggest chance of effecting a change (and by the way, that person will be the first to tell the safety officer to go do something useful if there's no good reason to bother the top brass).
In most companies, the folks responsible for doing computer security auditing report directly to the board for this precise reason. I know that I would be both eligible for and deserving dismissal if I kept my mouth shut about a security risk that is so big I honestly believe it shouldn't be done -- even if my entire chain of command doesn't like the idea.
Bert Driehuis -- All I asked was a friggin' rotatin' chair. Throw me a bone here, people.
yes, you're right, it seems i was. i'm glad you responded anyway; you asked some good questions.
.016 grams. I'm assuming NASA used Pu -239, not Pu -238, which has a much higher toxicity (one mCi weighs .00006 gm). So the upshot is 2.24-8 g/kg body weight is enough to give a person bone cancer in 4 years & therefore .00000152 grams would be carcinogenic to a 150 lb (68kg) person.
... could receive 99 percent or more of the radiation exposure." This condition would necessitate the banning of future agricultural land use and the permanent relocation of the population in any affected urban area.
i got my data from Helen Caldicott, founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility, regarded by some as an extremist (read: aggressively radical), regarded by others as aggressively logical, regarded by many as an irritant. I could not re-find the original citation, & so was forced to make do with information from the Agency for Toxic Substances and disease Registry. This site does paint a much less grim picture: it states that 1400 pCi/kg body weight causes bone cancer in 4 years. A pCi is equivalent to one-billionth of an mCi; one mCi of plutonium 239 weighs
nonetheless, that same site lists the Annual Limit on Intake of Pu-239 as 20,000 pCi, which is equivalent to 3.2-7 g, or three millionths of a gram. It does not, however, say what the result of exceeding this limit would be.
Yet NASA's Final Environmental Impact Statement warns of the dangers of "inadvertent reentry," stating that if the Cassini disintegrates, dispersing the plutonium, "5 billion of the estimated 7 to 8 billion world population at the time
Originally I had thought that solar power was a viable alternative. Visiting the European Space Research and Technology Centre shows that it is not.
I suppose that now is the time to hang the tie-dyed dancing teddy bears, but it seems to me that if the best safe option is not feasible, perhaps the mission should not be flown at all. The risk of a necessary "permanent relocation" of entire urban areas seems unacceptable to me, especially if we are still theoretically practicing democracy.
As far as the media goes, I think media outlets--especially the conglomerates, or the ones owned by conglomerates--generally hesitate to dig into little-known government scandals, since the government is one of its main sources of information. For instance, a reporter can simply report verbatim what a government agent has said, and feel secure in not verifying it. (I have done the same thing above, perhaps naively).
Civilian reports, on the other hand, require research and verification, which is time-consuming and expensive. Therefore reporters lean towards government sources since it is more expedient and generally puts them in a better light with their bosses, since they don't have to authorize unusual expenditures. Smaller for-profit venues don't have the funds for extensive investigations; not-for-profits are anomalies to be commended.
I do not think this is a conspiracy theory; i think it is simply the result of businesses doing what businesses do, which is attempt to make money. I'm probably safe in saying that media corporations are still corporations, which have as their explicit goal the accumulation of capital.
If you take it higher up the chain, such as to the officer responsible, at a security or safety meeting, there's a good chance you'll be looking for other work in a surprisingly short space of time.
Documentation, there, is also fascinating to behold. ISO 9000 compliancy is easy, if you reword the requirements and downgrade your project. Safety isn't an issue, when you can blame a technician or metal fatigue.
Whistle-blowing at NASA is further complicated by the strict security regulations. Anyone with an alternative lifestyle, "unapproved" sexual orientation, or even just plain enthusiasm, is classed as a Security Risk, according to the Red Tag safety/security briefings. Co-workers are encouraged to watch these Potential Subversives, in an NSA documentary designed to instill terror and fear in the Unwashed Masses.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)