Showing posts with label toxic exposures. Show all posts
Showing posts with label toxic exposures. Show all posts

Friday, May 15, 2015

Court Overturns Justice for National Guard Soldiers

Court overturns $85 million award for Oregon soldiers
AP
By Steven Dubois
May 14, 2015
A federal jury in Portland found KBR guilty of negligence after a three-week trial in late 2012. Each of the 12 soldiers was awarded $850,000 in noneconomic damages and $6.25 million in punitive damages.

PORTLAND, Ore. — The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned an $85 million jury award to a dozen Oregon National Guard soldiers who said they were sickened from guarding a water treatment plant during the Iraq War.

The military contractor Kellogg, Brown and Root successfully argued that Oregon was not the proper jurisdiction for the case. KBR is based in Houston, and similar cases filed by soldiers from Indiana, West Virginia and South Carolina are pending in federal court there.

“We are thrilled with the result; it is the right result and we look forward to a successful conclusion to this and all the legacy tort claims that relate to KBR’s work supporting the U.S. military in Iraq,” KBR attorney Geoffrey Harrison said by phone Thursday.
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Tuesday, May 12, 2015

Tucson Veteran's Guardian Angels Have Big Hearts Deep Pockets

Anonymous donor pays off Tucson veteran's $217K mortgage 
KVOA News 4 Tucson
Written By Lauren Reimer
May 11, 2015
Those troubles are over. An anonymous donor saw the story we ran last Tuesday, and with the help of two quick working realtors, paid off the mortgage on the building, a total of $217,000.
TUCSON - A Tucson veteran has found his guardian angel. Facing foreclosure, and terminal cancer, Bob O'Rourke and his wife Kathy are now breathing a sigh of relief.

Just last week, they feared they would lose their home and business.

Thanks to some of our viewers, their worries are now fewer.

"I never would have thought it was going to happen to me,” said Bob.

Bob has cancer, believed to be connected to drinking contaminated water at Camp Lejeune in the 1970's.

Pain makes it so he can only work a few days a week.

The mortgage went unpaid, and his application for disability from the VA went unanswered.

"I figured they were going to auction the building and I'd get a call and they'd tell me how long I have to move out," said O'Rourke.
read more here
KVOA | KVOA.com | Tucson, Arizona

Wednesday, May 6, 2015

Camp Lejeune Marine Battles to Live After Chemical Exposure

Former Marine fights for disability benefits after chemical exposure
KVOA News
Written By Lauren Reimer
May 5, 2015

TUCSON - A Tucson veteran who thought his fighting days were over is now in a battle he can't seem to win. It's against the very organization that's supposed to help him and other vets deal with the effects of war.

His case goes back 40 years, but now his time is running out.

Stationed at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina off and on for three years back in the 70's, former Marine, Robert O'Rourke, is one of thousands possibly exposed to drinking water contaminated with dangerous chemicals.

With his health declining, he filed for veterans' benefits and qualified, but had his claim for disability denied.

"I have kidney cancer, lung, liver, and now it's in my bone in back," said O'Rourke.

In 2012, a new law made it possible for veterans and civilians who lived at camp Lejeune between 1957 and 1987 to receive VA health benefits if they were diagnosed with any of 15 listed health conditions.

O'Rourke qualified, and now has his medical expenses and prescriptions paid for.

"Their medical care is fantastic," said O'Rourke. "They took care of everything right away."

The cancer will never leave his body. "Eventually it's going to kill me," he said.

This makes working nearly impossible. A jeweler by trade, the 60-year-old is not yet eligible for social security. He thought he would apply for disability, but was denied.
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Monday, March 23, 2015

Camp Lejeune Contamination Victims Include Thousands in Florida

Thousands in Florida potential victims of Marine camp contamination 
Orlando Sentinel
By Elyssa Cherney
March 21, 2015
Christina Peach, 39, was diagnosed with stage 1 kidney cancer last year. Peach, who was born on the Marine base Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, attributes her illness to contaminated groundwater she may have consumed while living nearby in 1975. Her father , Michael Hightower also died
(Tom Benitez, Orlando Sentinel)

Christina Peach's parents welcomed a seemingly healthy baby into the world in 1975 at the Naval Regional Medical Center in Camp Lejeune, the North Carolina base where her father was stationed as a Marine sergeant.

Seven years later, a chemical consulting company found that water from the emergency-room sink contained 1,400 parts per billion of trichloroethylene — 280 times its regulatory limit for drinking water today — which "has been reported to produce liver and kidney damage and central nervous system disturbances in humans," according to a memo from Grainger Laboratories in 1982.

Peach, 39, who now lives in Mount Dora, believes the water she was exposed to in utero and as an infant is responsible for the kidney cancer she developed last year and for her father's premature death.

Doctors discovered the mass growing on her right kidney when she got a CT scan for appendicitis in January 2014. Her father, Michael Hightower, 61, died 10 months later from lung cancer that had spread to his brain, bladder and bones, she said.
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Sunday, February 15, 2015

Twentynine Palms Marines Exposed to Banned Fire Retardant

22 Marines exposed to fire retardant in California accident
By Associated Press
Published: February 13, 2015
The U.S. banned new production of halon in the 1990s because it can deplete ozone in the atmosphere, but its use is still allowed.

TWENTYNINE PALMS, Calif. (AP) — Nearly two dozen Marines were treated for exposure to a fire retardant gas Thursday after an extinguishing system accidentally went off in an assault vehicle during a training exercise, but there were no serious injuries, officials said.

An equipment malfunction caused the fire suppression system to go off inside a tank-like amphibious assault vehicle during an afternoon exercise at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms, base spokesman Dave Marks said.

There was no fire or explosion but 22 Marines were exposed to halon, Marks said.

All of them were taken to the base hospital. Three were kept overnight for observation and the rest were released to resume training, Marks said.
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Friday, November 7, 2014

Troops exposed to chemical warfare toxins in Iraq

Pentagon shrugged off troops' chemical exposure in Iraq
Defense officials are reaching out now to offer medical help
UPI News
By Mary Papenfuss
Nov. 6, 2014
The information about the large number of potential exposures emerged following an internal review of Pentagon records ordered by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel after an investigation by the New York Times initially found that 17 service members were injured by sarin or a sulfur mustard agent.

WASHINGTON, Nov. 6 (UPI) -- Some 629 U.S. troops reported suspicions that they had been exposed to chemical warfare toxins in Iraq, yet the Pentagon failed to adequately treat them or track possible exposures, defense officials have revealed.

Contact with the toxins occurred beginning in 2003 when troops found degraded chemical weapons from the 1980s hidden in underground caches or in makeshift bombs.
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Saturday, November 1, 2014

VA to begin compensating family members of Camp Lejeune

VA vows to pay families sickened after exposure to Lejeune water
News Observer
BY MARTHA QUILLIN
October 31, 2014

Despite promises by the Department of Veterans Affairs, critics of the agency say they don’t trust it to help Marine Corps family members exposed to contaminated water at Camp Lejeune because the VA is still fumbling the cases of sickened veterans two years after Congress ordered they be treated for free or at low cost.

The VA announced last week that it’s ready to begin compensating family members for the out-of-pocket costs they have incurred since March 2013 for 15 medical conditions associated with exposure to chemicals that entered the drinking water at the Eastern North Carolina military base. The Marine Corps has said the water was contaminated with more than a dozen chemicals, including known carcinogens, between 1957 and 1987.

The military has said that between 750,000 and 1 million people – veterans, family members and civilian workers – may have been exposed to contaminated water before the tainted sources were shut down.
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Friday, October 31, 2014

Chemical Weapons Exposures to Iraq Veterans Kept Secret

Report: Troops, vets to get checked for chemical exposure in Iraq
Stars and Stripes
Published: October 30, 2014

The Pentagon will offer medical examinations and long-term health monitoring to servicemembers and veterans exposed to chemical warfare agents in Iraq as part of a review of how the military handled encounters with chemical munitions during the American occupation, The New York Times reported Wednesday.

An Oct. 15 Times story found that while the United States had gone to war looking for an active weapons of mass destruction program, troops instead quietly found and suffered from the remnants of the long abandoned arsenal.

Since that article, which detailed instances of exposure that the military kept secret in some cases for nearly a decade, more veterans and servicemembers have come forward, the Times reported. To date, neither the Pentagon nor any of the services have released a full list of chemical weapons recoveries and exposures.

The Times found that the military did not follow its own guidelines in the initial care of many patients, and did not establish a means for tracking their health, as guidelines also required.

In response, two senior Army doctors said in interviews this week that new medical examinations for troops and veterans who were exposed to chemical munitions would begin in early 2015. The Navy too has announced it will ramp up care.
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Sunday, October 12, 2014

Toxic Battlefields Burn Pits Leave Afghanistan and Iraq Veterans Fighting for Their Lives

'Toxic battlefield'
Many tie Iraq, Afghanistan War veterans' illnesses to burn pits, dust
Live Well Nebraska
By Steve Liewer
World-Herald staff writer
Posted: Sunday, October 12, 2014
U.S. MARINE CORPS
Burn pits used especially in the early days of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars to destroy trash sent piles of wood, paper, medical waste, metal, plastics and even human waste up in smoke.

Jeff Flint remembers the sandstorms that regularly cloaked his military base in Iraq in a choking darkness.

And the black smoke, from the base’s fiery 10-acre garbage pit, that frequently blanketed both the gate where he stood guard and the tent where he slept during his yearlong deployment with the Nebraska National Guard in 2006-07.

“It was constant, 24 hours a day. It made you sick, nauseated,” said Flint, 45, of Fremont, Nebraska. “Put a dome over a city, and that’s what it was like.”

The hacking cough he developed more than seven years ago has never gone away. And it’s been joined by the tingling in his body and the numbness in his hands from multiple sclerosis, which he was diagnosed with two years after his return.

Flint is among tens of thousands of Iraq and Afghanistan War vets who have developed chronic illnesses since returning from the war zones. Many — including Flint and his brother, John, who served with him and also has been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis — are convinced they are sick because of noxious stuff they breathed in during their deployments.

“It’s just a toxic battlefield,” said Dan Sullivan, president and CEO of the Sergeant Sullivan Center, a nonprofit organization that supports veterans with post-deployment health problems.
“You’ve got a bunch of toxic stuff floating around in an atmosphere that picks everything up.
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Saturday, September 20, 2014

Fort McClellan Veterans Sick and Dying From Toxic Exposures

Sick veterans who served at shuttered, toxic Army base turn to Congress, VA for help
FoxNews.com
By Barnini Chakraborty
Published September 19, 2014

WASHINGTON – Sue Frasier spent the first six months of her military career at Alabama's Fort McClellan. But that short stint -- 44 years ago at an Army base the EPA later would find so toxic it would shut it down -- was all it took for her to start getting sick, she says.

Her problems began shortly after completing boot camp in 1970 at the Anniston, Ala., base. Today, she says she's coping with asthma, a life-threatening gastrointestinal disease that required surgery, and fibromyalgia that results in long-term pain and tenderness in her joints and muscles.

"It hurts everywhere, but at least I can still walk and talk," she told FoxNews.com.

Frasier is among thousands of veterans who were stationed at the former Army base who believe they were exposed to dangerous polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs. They repeatedly have turned to the Department of Veterans Affairs for help, seeking aid for medical treatment and a formal study of their ailments -- but say their pleas have been largely ignored or buried in red tape for decades. Today, they're looking to fresh leadership at the VA, and allies in Congress, to finally take on their case.

The true cause of the veterans' ailments has never been officially determined. Fort McClellan housed several Army components, including a division for chemical weapons training and research. But many veterans suspect they were sickened by chemicals dumped near Anniston by Monsanto Co., which had facilities in the area and disposed of chemicals near the base.
Two pieces of legislation have been introduced to deal with the veterans' medical claims. A proposed Senate bill would establish a national center for research on the diagnosis and treatment of health conditions of the descendants of veterans exposed to toxic substances during service in the Armed Forces. The bill has not advanced.

Over on the House side, a bill more specific to Frasier and similar veterans' claims, and backed by Rep. Paul Tonko, D-N.Y., would require the VA to create a registry of everyone who served at Fort McClellan from 1935 to 1999. It then would require the department to reach out to those veterans and offer health exams and information about the effects of toxic exposure. It also would open up disability payments to the veterans.

The House bill, though, has been stuck in congressional gridlock for five years and hasn't made its way out of the House Veterans Affairs Committee.
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Tuesday, July 22, 2014

U.S. taxpayer dollars going up in smoke in Afghanistan

U.S. troops in Afghanistan sent waste to open burn pits, report finds
LA Times
By DAVID ZUCCHINO
July 21, 2014

Although the U.S. has spent millions to build incinerators in Afghanistan to avoid exposing anyone to toxic smoke from open burning, American troops sent waste to an Afghan-operated open pit for five months last year, according to an inspector general’s report issued late Monday.

The Afghans continued to burn their own dangerous waste -- including batteries, tires and plastic -- in the pit because they didn’t want to spend money on fuel to run new, U.S.-provided incinerators, which stood unused behind a locked gate, the report found.

The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction’s report said the incidents violate a 2010 Pentagon prohibition against using such pits except in extraordinary circumstances. U.S. forces did not notify Congress, as required, to seek an exemption from the ban, the report said.

“This is another case of U.S. taxpayer dollars going up in smoke,” said John F. Sopko, the inspector general. “Congress was never told about it -- and worst of all, the health of U.S. troops has been put needlessly at risk.”
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Thursday, July 3, 2014

EPA: Fort Carson dumped 143,000 pounds of chemicals into Colorado waterways

News 5 Investigates: 143,000 pounds of chemicals from Fort Carson found in Colorado waterways
KOAA News
Eric Ross
July 2, 2014

Data obtained from the Environmental Protection Agency shows nearly 850,000 pounds of toxic chemicals ended up in Colorado rivers and streams in 2012.

News 5 uncovers one of the largest offenders is Fort Carson. Digging deeper, we learned the military post has a history of violations. Some violations were verbal or written warnings, while others resulted in hefty fines.

According to the EPA, 143,000 pounds of toxic chemicals from Fort Carson made their way into Clover Ditch which runs into Fountain Creek.

"We don't want any toxins in our water," El Paso County Commissioner Dennis Hisey said.

We brought our findings to Hisey, who just so happens to serve on the board for the Fountain Creek Watershed Flood Control and Greenway District.

"Regardless of whether it's in our stream or in our drinking cup, what we need to be concerned about is what's in the cup," Hisey said.
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Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Housing Complex for OEF and OIF Veterans Contaminated

CONTAMINATED SOIL FOUND AT LONG ISLAND HOUSING COMPLEX FOR VETERANS
WABC News New York
Wednesday, June 11, 2014

ISLANDIA (WABC) -- Authorities have made a disturbing discovery at a Long Island housing development for veterans returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Officials in Suffolk County say test results show contaminated soil at Veterans Way in Islandia, where six affordable housing homes were built for veterans.

The ground tested positive for hazardous pesticides, metals and petroleum.

The Suffolk County Water Authority and health department have been contacted to test the well water.

Among the contaminants found at the Veteran's Way development were petroleum byproducts, pesticides including DDT and chlordane, and metals such as chromium, cobalt, lead, nickel and zinc.

"The highest levels of contamination were found to be in the berm on the property, and that means the fill in the berm has to be removed," Suffolk County District Attorney Tom Spota said. "We have called in the Suffolk County Water Authority and the County Health Department to review these results and develop plans for well testing and other measures to ensure the safety of the drinking water for this development."
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Wednesday, May 21, 2014

OEF OIF Veterans Burning For You

Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
May 21, 2014

Burn Pits have been making troops sick and Congress was fixing it in 2008. If you think any of what is going on with our troops and veterans is new, it isn't. It has been one long nightmare for all of them.

This is another reminder of what Congress did not take care of. Aside from the troubles with the VA, there are so many other things Congress could have fixed but they played politics with the troops the same as they played politics with our veterans. It is like a game to them but the men and women serving this country had to pay for it.
Seven members of Congress have added their names to a growing list of legislators concerned about service members who say burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan have made them sick.

“It has come to our attention that a growing number of veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan are becoming sick and dying from what appears to be overexposure to dangerous toxins produced by burn pits used to destroy waste,” reads a letter from Rep. Tim Bishop, D-N.Y., to Eric Shinseki, the new secretary of veterans affairs. “Further conversations with other veterans have revealed that the armed forces have not investigated this threat adequately.”

That piece of news didn't come out last year or the year before. It came out in 2009.

What did Congress do? They wrote a bill.
The bill, sponsored by Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., would amend Title 38 of the U.S. Code, which deals with veterans benefits, by adding a passage stating that a veteran exposed in the line of duty to “an occupational and environmental health chemical hazard of particular concern” is eligible for hospital care, medical services and nursing home care for any disability, even if there is “insufficient medical evidence to conclude that such disability may be associated with exposure.”

The bill comes in the wake of a series of hearings about troops being exposed to carcinogenic material at Qarmat Ali water treatment plant in Iraq; a sulfur fire in Mosul, Iraq; and burn-pit smoke throughout Iraq and Afghanistan.

The veterans felt they had no other choice but to sue KBR in 2010.
Some 241 military personnel and contractors who became ill after serving in Afghanistan and Iraq are suing a Houston-based firm, claiming they were poisoned by smoke from trash fires, the Washington Post reported Friday.

The claimants, who are from 42 states, are suffering from a range of conditions including cancer and severe breathing problems, which they blame on the thick, black smoke. The symptoms were reportedly nicknamed "Iraqi crud" by troops.

They are taking legal action against Kellogg Brown & Root, which operated more than two dozen burn-pits in the two countries, the Post reported. It used to be a subsidiary of Halliburton, which is a also a defendant in the case.

Veterans Returning Home From Iraq, Afghanistan Point To Open Air Burn Pits As New ‘Agent Orange’
CBS News
Ken Bastida
May 20, 2014
They’ve filed class action lawsuits, alleging the operator of the pits KBR and its former parent company Halliburton acted negligently. KBR denies that, and argues as a military contractor it shares the same immunity as the government from lawsuits over war related injuries.

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) — Hundreds of veterans coming back from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are falling ill and many are dying of what’s being called the new “Agent Orange”: open air burn pits.

There’s no proven cause but vets and their families say they know why.

Lieutenant Colonel Gwen Chiaramonte is proud to have served her country. At Balad Air Force Base in Iraq she was a combat stress therapist, familiar with exposure to danger off base. “You worry but you think you just have to live,” she said.

Now she believes there was danger from within too: An open air pit where the base’s garbage was burned. “They they just threw everything in. Vehicles, tires, plastic bottles, trash, medical waste, dead animals. Then they would pour jet fuel on it and just light it,” she said.

Chiaramonte says the burn pit spewed columns of ashy smoke that often blew right into her nearby housing unit. “It would smell like it would be on fire,” she said.

She started getting constant nose bleeds. Then when she got home, the really bad news: A rare form of aggressive ovarian cancer.
read more here
This makes all of this seem even worse since this is what came out in 2008

Monday, December 1, 2008


Senator Akaka wants answers on burn pit toxins

Akaka wants DoD, VA to review war-zone toxins

By Kelly Kennedy - Staff writer
Posted : Monday Dec 1, 2008 19:08:25 EST

Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, chairman of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, has asked that the co-chairs of the Defense Department and Veterans Affairs Oversight Committee begin a review of environmental toxins — including those coming from burn pits — at bases in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Reports of possible exposure to smoke from burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan have come to the committee’s attention,” Akaka wrote in a letter dated Dec. 1. “Concerns about such exposure would appear to be an ideal opportunity for focused efforts to track the location of service members in relation to the possible exposure sites.”

The letter was addressed to Gordon England, deputy defense secretary, and Gordon Mansfield, deputy VA secretary.

Thursday, April 24, 2014

Marine's wife grieves after burn pit in Iraq killed husband in Colorado

'Our plan was to grow old together': Heartbroken widow of decorated Marine, 33, who succumbed to cancer blames his early death on controversial burn pits in Iraq
Daily Mail UK
By SNEJANA FARBEROV
23 April 2014

The family of a retired 33-year-old U.S. Marine who succumbed to cancer over the weekend believe that his untimely death was the direct result of his exposure to open-air burn pits in Iraq.

Sean Terry, a married father of three from Littleton, Colorado, passed away Saturday after a seven-month battle with terminal esophageal cancer.

‘We had plans. Our plans were to grow old together and raise our kids together. We can't do that now,’ his wife Robyn Terry told 9News just days before his death.

Mrs Terry and the veteran's friends insist that the Marine who earned a Purple Heart while serving in Iraq in 2005-2006 was sickened by toxins from burns pits, which for years had been used in Iraq and Afghanistan to dispose of waste.

According to information available on the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs site, at this time, research does not show evidence of long-term health problems associated with exposure to burn pits.

However, the agency's site concedes that 'toxins in burns pits may affect the skin, eyes, respiratory respiratory and cardiovascular systems, gastrointestinal tract and internal organs.’

The portal goes on to say that most of the irritation is temporary and resolves once the exposure is gone. ‘This includes eye irritation and burning, coughing and throat irritation, breathing difficulties, and skin itching and rashes,’ the statement reads.

The VA's page also cites a 2011 Institute of Medicine study, which found that high levels of fine dust and pollution in Iraq and Afghanistan 'may pose a greater danger to respiratory illnesses than exposure to burn pits.'
read more here

Wednesday, March 19, 2014

VA Open Air Burn Pit Registry Late

Senators Press VA to Explain Delay in Burn Pit Registry
NBC News
BY BILL BRIGGS
March 18, 2014

Two U.S. senators insisted Tuesday that Veterans Affairs Secretary Erik Shinseki reveal why his agency is nearly three months late in creating a legally-mandated registry of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans potentially poisoned — some lethally — by exposure to toxic trash-fire trenches.

The so-called "burn pits," scattered throughout Iraq and Afghanistan, spewed acrid smoke while breaking down damaged Humvees, ordnance, mattresses, rocket launchers, and even amputated body parts. Some were ignited by jet fuel.

Perhaps the largest such dump was in Balad, Iraq, spanning the length of 10 football fields. The plumes produced have been dubbed "this generation's Agent Orange."

On Jan. 10, 2013, President Barack Obama signed a law giving the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs one year to create and maintain the Open Air Burn Pit Registry, meant to identify and monitor veterans who inhaled the pollutants. The VA also was directed to later report its findings to Congress.
read more here

Saturday, February 22, 2014

Iraq War did not end for those we sent

Study: Soil dust suspected in illnesses among Iraq vets
Navy researcher says DoD falls short in addressing threat
Air Force Times
By Patricia Kime
Staff writer
Feb. 20, 2014

When Army Sgt. Jayson Williams deployed to Iraq in 2003, he was a healthy 33-year-old who enjoyed the outdoors, running and playing with his son.

When he returned home, he found he couldn’t do routine chores without becoming exhausted or needing to take deep breaths.

He deployed twice more, and his condition worsened. First thought to be emphysema, his diagnosis later was changed to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. And after having an invasive lung biopsy, he received even grimmer news — constrictive bronchiolitis, an irreversible lung disease that robs a patient of lung function.

Williams thinks his condition is the result of smoke from a burn pit near his barracks and fumes of a sulfur mine fire that raged for a month near Mosul, spewing toxic materials into the air.

But a growing body of research indicates another factor may contribute to long-term respiratory diseases of veterans like Williams: microscopic dust particles containing heavy metals and other toxins.

A long-term study has found that 14 percent of deployed troops reported chronic respiratory symptoms such as cough, bronchitis, shortness of breath and asthma, compared with 10 percent who did not deploy. The results suggest specific exposures, rather than long exposures, may play a role — particularly among ground troops who deployed to the desert environment of the Persian Gulf.
read more here

Saturday, January 25, 2014

Veterans exposed to cadaver parts from contaminated lab

Veterans exposed to cadaver parts from contaminated lab
Bloomberg
By Kathleen Miller
January 24, 2014

WASHINGTON — The Department of Veterans Affairs ordered $241 million of cadaver tissue and other material derived from human and animal bodies in the last three years, some of it from vendors warned by federal regulators about contamination in their supply chain.

About $4.7 million of the VA purchases came from Alachua, Fla.-based RTI Surgical Inc. and the nonprofit Musculoskeletal Transplant Foundation, of Edison, N.J., according to data obtained by Bloomberg News under a Freedom of Information Act request.

The VA ordered human tissue from the two suppliers after they were warned by the FDA for safety deficiencies — RTI for contaminated products and processing facilities, and Musculoskeletal Transplant for distributing tissue from tainted donor bodies, according to federal contracting data compiled by Bloomberg.

The suppliers said they have addressed the problems, which weren't tied to human harms.

The disclosures come as Congress and veterans' advocates are pressing the VA about whether it tracks body parts and other implants used to treat veterans well enough to warn patients of potential dangers. In September 2012, the VA shelved a system it was building to help alert patients when the parts are recalled. Some of the VA's buying was made outside standardized purchasing contracts without required justifications, the Government Accountability Office said earlier this month.

"It's a big accident waiting to happen," said Rick Weidman, executive director for government affairs with the Silver Spring, Md.-based Vietnam Veterans of America.
read more here

Saturday, December 21, 2013

Atomic Sailors suffering for service

The Atomic Sailors
Tampa Bay Times
William R. Levesque
December 21, 2013

It was the Navy's dirtiest job. The crew of the U.S.S. Calhoun County dumped thousands of radioactive barrels into the Atlantic Ocean from 1946 to 1960. The Navy says the work was safe. But 2013 marks the 50th anniversary of the ship's sinking. The Calhoun County's own Navy ordered it scuttled because it was a radioactive hazard. Now a Pasco County widow fights to prove her husband's death is tied to the vessel.

ABOUT THIS STORY
The Tampa Bay Times examined thousands of pages of documentation and interviewed more than 50 former crewmen of the U.S.S. Calhoun County for this story. Bernice Albernaz of New Port Richey provided the Times with all Department of Veterans Affairs reports and correspondence she and her late husband received starting in 2001. Albernaz also provided letters the couple wrote to the VA, government officials and others and allowed the newspaper to review George Albernaz’s medical records still in her possession. Albernaz also provided a copy of her daily diary from the time her husband first became ill in 1988.

The Times examined the file maintained by the U.S. Court of Veterans Appeals in Washington, D.C. on Harvey Lucas’s VA claim and examined ship records at the National Archives in College Park, Md. and New York City, including the ship’s deck logs and muster rolls. These logs documented where the U.S.S. Calhoun County traveled and often noted when the ship dumped radioactive waste.

The Times interviewed Deborah Derrick, a former aide to U.S. Rep. David Skaggs, D-Colo., by phone and at her Arlington, Va. home. She also generously answered numerous questions by email about her research, which began in 1998. Derrick last week published a book about the ship, Half Lives: The True Story of an Atomic Waste Dumping Ship, a Government Cover-up, and the Veterans’ Families Shaped By It All. For more information about the ship and her work, visit HalfLives.com.

Derrick is president of Friends of the Global Fight Against AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, a nonprofit advocacy group in Washington, D.C. Times researcher John Martin and photographer Joseph Garnett contributed to this story.
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