Soldiers May Face Toxic Risk

By BRYAN CORBIN Courier & Press Statehouse bureau (317) 631-7405 or corbinb@courierpress.com

INDIANAPOLIS – The Indiana National Guard is trying to locate former soldiers who may have been exposed to a highly toxic chemical while serving in Basra, Iraq, in 2003 so that they can receive medical evaluations.

A total of 139 soldiers serving with the 1/152nd Infantry based out of Jasper, Ind., and Tell City, Ind., may have been exposed to sodium dichromate, a known carcinogen, while guarding an Iraqi facility – the Qarmat Ali water treatment plant – for about six months after the Iraq war started, a National Guard official said.

Maj. Gen. Martin Umbarger, adjutant general of the Indiana Nation

al Guard, said the Guard has sought to contact all 139 soldiers in the unit as well as their larger battalion of 660 soldiers under the assumption they may have been exposed.

Next week, Sen. Evan Bayh plans to introduce legislation to create an Agent Orange-style registry of current and former soldiers exposed to sodium dichromate, his spokesman Eric Kleiman said.

Bayh’s office has been reviewing the issue all summer. Late Friday, Bayh sent a letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Army Secretary Pete Geren asking how soldiers exposed to toxic contaminants will be tracked and provided for medically.

Of the 660 Indiana soldiers, Umbarger said, about half have been discharged from the military. The remainder still are enlisted in the Guard, serving either in Iraq or stationed in Indiana.

Umbarger told a state legislative summer study committee that the former soldiers must be located for evaluation and their exposure documented in medical records

That would allow them to receive medical treatment at Veterans Administration hospitals.

“We’re knocking on doors, we’re calling friends. We know who they are,” Umbarger said. “But there are still a number we have not gotten in contact with.”

Hot line

The Guard in August hosted town meetings in Evansville, Jasper, Terre Haute and elsewhere to get the word out and set up a hot line for former soldiers who suspect they were exposed. The number is (800) 237-2850, ext. 3128.

The Indiana soldiers apparently underwent X-rays and blood tests for sodium dichromate when their Iraq deployments ended in 2003 or 2004, and the results showed no high levels, Umbarger said.

But Bayh’s letter to Gates and Geren expresses concern that the Army testing didn’t occur within the four-month window of time necessary to gauge health effects of sodium dichromate and that an out-of-date procedure for judging toxin amounts was used.

Umbarger said Friday that one soldier who served with the unit is known to have died from lung cancer within the past two years, and another has been diagnosed with cancer of the sinus cavity.

Medical references say sodium dichromate is a known carcinogen that can cause cancers of the lung and respiratory tract.

At the Qarmat Ali plant, it reportedly was used to remove corrosion in pipes that pumped water into oil fields for oil production, the Boston Globe reported. A California incident where residents were exposed to the harmful industrial chemical was the basis for the film “Erin Brockovich.”

Although the possible exposure occurred in 2003, Umbarger said, he only learned of it in June through a phone call from Sen. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota warning him of what a Senate committee had discovered.

According to the Boston Globe, Dorgan’s Senate committee conducted hearings in June about a private contractor, KBR, that now operates the Qarmat Ali plant. American employees of KBR who were sickened by sodium dichromate testified they had replaced Indiana troops who previously had guarded the facility in 2003, prompting concerns about the soldiers’ health as well.

Kleiman said the legislation Bayh is introducing next week would:

n Establish a registry making veterans exposed to hazardous chemicals eligible for medical exams and tests.

n Authorize the Department of Defense to conduct a scientific review of exposure-related health effects.

n Elevate such veterans to priority status at VA health facilities.

n Require frontline commanders to report exposure to their nondeployed headquarters.

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