Board: Guardsmen were not overexposed to toxin
By Maureen Groppe - Gannett News Service
Posted : Monday Dec 22, 2008 18:55:50 EST
WASHINGTON — The Army correctly concluded that Indiana National Guardsmen were not overexposed to a toxin in Iraq, according to an independent review by the Defense Health Board. The review could make it harder for a group of guardsmen to continue their lawsuit against defense contractor KBR of Texas.
Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., who was briefed on the findings Monday, said he still has unanswered questions.
“What did KBR know, when did they know it, and what did they do?” Bayh told CBS News on Monday, according to a transcript of the interview. “Apparently, it was bad enough that the KBR people weren’t going back into the site. The Indiana guardsmen said, ‘Wait a minute, we’re not going back in there anymore!’ Something clicked in our guardsmen’s minds that something’s not right here, and if those employees aren’t going in, why should be we going in?”
Bayh had asked the Army for more information after two KBR employees told Senate Democrats in June that workers and soldiers at a water pumping plant in Iraq were exposed to sodium dichromate in 2003.
Sodium dichromate, which was used at the site as an anti-corrosive, contains the carcinogen hexavalent chromium. Members of the Indiana National Guard were among the soldiers providing protection to defense contractors working on the Qarmat Ali Water Injection Facility.
Sixteen Indiana guardsmen filed suit earlier this month against KBR, accusing the contractor of publicly downplaying and privately concealing the health risks.
The company has said it acted appropriately and is fighting the lawsuit.
The site was visibly contaminated by sodium dichromate when secured by U.S. military forces, according to the Army.
But the Defense Health Board, an advisory committee to the secretary of defense that provides independent advice, said none of the 137 soldiers and civilians tested had “substantially elevated” levels of chromium in their blood.
Bayh has expressed concerns about the type of tests conducted on the soldiers and their timeliness.
Because of the results of the tests on the Indiana guardsmen, the Army made the “pragmatic and reasonable” decision not to also test guard units from Oregon and South Carolina who were no longer at the site, the Defense Health Board said.
The board concluded that the Defense Department’s response was “prompt and appropriate” and included testing for health effects within approximately 30 days of the last potential exposure.
The testing did find many reports of respiratory-tract irritation. But that’s similar to what other soldiers serving in the desert have experienced, the board said. Even though the tests did not find excessive levels of chromium the Defense Health Board said it “may have been revealing or reassuring” to know if those with more respiratory problems had different chromium levels,
Bayh is also pushing legislation to help veterans exposed to toxic contaminants during war. The changes would include making at-risk veterans eligible for medical tests, allowing for a scientific review of evidence linking exposure to health problems, and requiring frontline commanders to report hazardous-material exposure.
“The burden of proof should not be on the soldier, many years later, to go back and prove that their health condition was related to that exposure,” Bayh told CBS News, according to the transcript. “That’s virtually impossible. The benefit of the doubt should go to the soldier.”
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“The burden of proof should not be on the soldier, many years later, to go back and prove that their health condition was related to that exposure,” Bayh told CBS News, according to the transcript. “That’s virtually impossible. The benefit of the doubt should go to the soldier.”
What Senator Bayh and other elected officials do NOT understand is that the VA does use the "benefit of the doubt" for veterans, they doubt any of them are ever telling the truth. They deny all claims for toxic exposures based on idiotic statements claiming that we the veterans can NOT tell them what day the exposure occurred or what was the amount of the toxic substances we were exposed to.
I have been down this route based on my medical problems I feel are related to my use as a human test subject at Edgewood Arsenal in 1974 during the Cold War era, when the Army doing experiments funded by the CIA, in all there were 354 different substances used at Edgewood, stuff like LSD, PCP, Scopolomine, and known chemical weapons like Sarin, Mustard agents, and BZ among them. Most drugs and substances are unknown to the "test veterans" or "medical volunteers" yet the EPA Superfund site shows 77 known toxic substances in the drinking water wells and the soil of the training areas on Edgewood Arsenal, now which it is a part of Aberdeen Proving Grounds, the EPA study was done in 1978 and at that time the EPA ordered the water wells capped and for a new source of water to be piped into the base and into the town of Edgewood, Maryland.
No one can argue that these toxins leached into the water wells from 1975 when the human experiments were stopped and 1978 when the EPA studies were don, the Army had been dumping chemicals into the ground or burying old barrels, both wooden and metal since 1917 when the Department of War established Edgewood Arsenal as the nations Chemical Weapons depot and research facility. No one really understood the long term toxic effects and proper disposal methods, the chemicals seeped out of the containers and contaminated the water sources.
When I submitted the EPA super fund site data and the list of known contaminants, the VA Regional Office told me that the reports were Internet trash, and that I could not PROVE I had been exposed to any of these contaminants. NO, I can't prove I was, but common sense tells you that I was on Temporary Duty (TDY) from June 25, 1974 - 22 August 1974. I brushed my teeth every day with that water, I drank coffee made from that water, I swam in the post swimming pool filled with that water, I took showers in that water for over 2 months, and I drank the kool aid in the mess hall over that two month period.
My medical problems can be linked to the toxins, everything from cardiac conditions, stomach problems or IBS, lung problems COPD,and other medical conditions. Can I prove that these toxins caused my problem NO, is it possible that these toxins contributed to my problems or aggravated them, YES, then there are the deliberate exposures from the actual experiments. This is a case where the 7120 men used in the 20 year program should be given "reasonable doubt" and their medical problems should be service connected if there is any possibility it could be linked to environmental exposures.
In a 1987 Supreme Court Decision Stanley versus the US, in a dissent Justice Sandra Day O'Connor (hardly a liberal judge) stated
No judicially crafted rule should insulate from liability the involuntary and unknowing human experimentation alleged [483 U.S. 669, 710] to have occurred in this case. Indeed, as JUSTICE BRENNAN observes, the United States military played an instrumental role in the criminal prosecution of Nazi officials who experimented with human subjects during the Second World War, ante, at 687, and the standards that the Nuremberg Military Tribunals developed to judge the behavior of the defendants stated that the "voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential . . . to satisfy moral, ethical and legal concepts." United States v. Brandt (The Medical Case), 2 Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals Under Control Council Law No. 10, p. 181 (1949). If this principle is violated the very least that society can do is to see that the victims are compensated, as best they can be, by the perpetrators. I am prepared to say that our Constitution's promise of due process of law guarantees this much. Accordingly, I would permit James Stanley's Bivens action to go forward, and I therefore dissent
Justice Sandra Day O'Connors dissent near the bottom of the pageSphere: Related Content
