First story from ProPublica's Local Reporting Network says nuclear lab workers may have been exposed to toxin

Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, the birthplace of the atomic bomb, may have exposed workers to harm after failing to keep track of a toxic metal used in nuclear weapons production. "The New Mexico lab’s failure to adequately track beryllium — small amounts of which can cause lung disease and cancer — violates federal regulations put in place to prevent worker overexposure, according to a report last week from the Department of Energy’s inspector general," Rebecca Moss reports for The Santa Fe New Mexican and ProPublica.

The story is the first from a year-long project, the Local Reporting Network, which ProPublica launched to support local and regional investigative reporting. Moss will be examining workplace safety issues at Los Alamos and other national laboratories that develop nuclear weapons for the DOE.

Los Alamos has had safety problems in the past. In October 2017, an independent federal safety board found that the lab's emergency preparedness plan was inadequate. Soon afterward the DOE investigated an incident in which a worker responded to an alarm by walking into an oxygen-deprived room, which could have killed the worker.

Los Alamos, which employs more than 11,000 workers, told the inspector general that the insufficient oversight is a result of staffing problems and the sheer number of the programs it oversees, but added that it is not aware of any workers having been exposed to beryllium. "Over the last decade, the inspector general has found issues with beryllium protections at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California," Moss reports.