EDITORIAL: Toxic exposure

EDITORIAL: Toxic exposure

The Issue: Indiana National Guard soldiers were exposed to a cancer-causing toxin.

Our View: These current and former soldiers deserve the best medical treatment available.

This nation learned a painful lesson through the struggles of Vietnam veterans who suffered Agent Orange exposure and Operation Desert Storm veterans who suffered from Gulf War syndrome — who sometimes fought for years to gain official recognition of and treatment for their maladies.

Sadly, it now appears that some Indiana National Guard soldiers were exposed to a highly toxic chemical in Iraq in 2003 during the early months of the current U.S. invasion and occupation.

A total of 139 soldiers from the 1st Battalion, 152nd Infantry, based in Jasper, Ind., and Tell City, Ind., were stationed in Basra, Iraq, guarding a water treatment plant. A private firm, Kellogg, Brown and Root, was contracted by the Army to operate the facility, post-invasion.

According to a congressional investigation and published reports, the Qarmat Ali treatment plant was strewn with an orange-colored dust. Despite assurances it was only a "mild irritant," the substance turned out to be a highly toxic industrial chemical, sodium dichromate, which is used to remove corrosion from pipes. Amid dust storms, it likely was impossible for Indiana soldiers and KBR employees to avoid breathing in the toxin or getting it on their skin. Sodium dichromate is a known carcinogen that has been linked to cancers of the lungs and respiratory tract.

The extent of the toxic exposure and potential cancer risk to those 139 Hoosier soldiers — among a larger group of 660 soldiers who were in the vicinity — did not become known publicly for five years. The adjutant general of the Indiana National Guard, Maj. Gen. Martin Umbarger, learned of it in June after a phone call from U.S. Sen. Byron Dorgan, a Democrat from North Dakota.

Dorgan's Senate committee had held a hearing into the actions of the private contractor over the toxic exposure of its own employees in Iraq. KBR employees who were sickened by sodium dichromate testified that Indiana soldiers who had been there were exposed, too.

U.S. Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., has raised serious questions about why the Indiana Guard was not notified more promptly. Although the 139 soldiers at Qarmat Ali underwent some medical testing at the end of that deployment, Bayh questioned whether the tests occurred within the four-month window for detecting contamination or if an out-of-date medical standard was used.

Bayh asked the Army to investigate the exposure, and last week Army Secretary Pete Geren agreed, appointing two top assistants to the probe.

Going forward, Bayh introduced a Senate bill to create a registry of the at-risk soldiers, similar to a 1978 registry for veterans exposed to the herbicide Agent Orange, so that they can be guaranteed follow-up medical evaluations and receive priority status at Veterans Administration hospitals.

Bayh's proposal is a good start. Since most of the current or former soldiers exposed are from Southwestern Indiana, we would urge that the VA try to make medical evaluations and any treatments available nearby. (A separate federal investigation found incidents of substandard medical care at the VA hospital in Marion, Ill., where many local veterans must travel.) The VA plans to build a new clinic on the East Side of Evansville in a few years. Medical resources for the exposed veterans logically should start there, although we recognize that more advanced medical care might have to be obtained elsewhere.

Our nation has a duty to the men and women who volunteered to serve in uniform to provide for their service-related medical needs. That is especially true for the Indiana Guardsmen, who through no fault of their own were exposed to a cancer-causing chemical.

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