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On March 15, 1993, at least five government officials boarded a C-26
military jet at Hanscom Air Force Base in Bedford and headed for Utah. Robert Knorr of the state Department of Public Health, Stetson Hall of
the Barnstable County Department of Health and the Environment, Thomas
McGrath of the state Department of Environmental Protection, Peter
Kahn of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Gen. John Carlson
checked into military housing at Dugway Proving Grounds, about 85
miles southwest of Salt Lake City.
For the next three days, the five officials observed the test burn of
artillery propellant in the "desert dome," a test site that looks
like an inflatable tennis court.
The test was elaborate.
Heaters and humidifiers simulated temperature and humidity of the
Upper Cape in the spring and fall. Sensors in the room were set up to
detect the presence of a suspected carcinogen and other chemicals,
such as toluene and benzene.
After calculating the amount of chemical released, the military and
Massachusetts health officials would use computer models to determine
how it would disperse in the Upper Cape's air.
The results of the test, which cost taxpayers more than $400,000, not
including the salaries and expenses of non-military officials, were to
be released by late summer 1993.
For many years, military units at the Upper Cape's Camp Edwards, part
of the Massachusetts Military Reservation, burned excess propellant -
heavy dark gunpowder - in open pans. The propellant contains
2,4-dinitrotoluene, which is believed to cause cancer.
The only place in New England where artillery is fired, Camp Edwards,
uses heavy guns between 15 and 21 days each year. The number of
propellant bags loaded into a gun determines how far the shell
travels. Because soldiers at Camp Edwards do not fire the maximum
range, the training produced several hundred pounds of excess
propellant each year.
For years, the Army and Guard officials said the open burning was
required to teach soldiers how to destroy propellant on the
battlefield. They also claimed that the material could not be recycled
because it was too volatile to truck away once it had been exposed to
air.
In 1992, Boston University researchers found increased rates of breast
and lung cancer in people living 20 years or more within 1.9 miles of
where the ammunition propellant bags were burned on the base.
That study served to re-ignite protests by community activists, who
had been agitating for an end to the practice of bag-burning since
1986.
Now, community protests prompted the military in March 1992 to suspend
the burning. (A year later, the Army would institute a new policy
requiring all Army bases to recycle rather than destroy the extra
propellant.)
Also in 1992, the Army National Guard agreed to test burn the
propellant to see if the burning released cancer-causing chemicals
into the air.
The test was originally scheduled in the fall of 1992 at Camp Edwards.
Officials decided to move it off-Cape after dozens of people objected
to testing on the densely populated Upper Cape.
No one seems to know
"We think the burn results are still being written," said Theresa
Barao, a spokesman for the state Department of Environmental
Protection. "We have some new people. The people following up on that
then are no longer here. ... But call the Department of Public Health.
They were handling it."
Knorr said the public health agency was not the lead agency on the
test burn issue.
"This is an environmental issue," he said.
McGrath of the state environmental department said he is not sure what
happened to the results.
"Very soon after the demonstration, I didn't have any further
involvement in that."
He said he went to Utah to make sure the test burn followed set
procedures.
"Everything was done according to the best available methods," he
said.
So what happened to the results?
"I don't remember the details, but there was some problem with
quality-control stuff," Knorr said. "The lab finished its work in
1994, but there was an agreement between DEP and DPH that neither of
us would see the results because we were at the stage of designing
criteria for a public health assessment on the Upper Cape, and we
didn't want to bias ourselves. We didn't want knowledge of the results
to bias us in the way we were setting this criterion."
Knorr said the state also lacked the money to analyze the test
results. As a result, the state Department of Public Health asked the
U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry - the ATSDR - in
Atlanta in January 1995 to analyze the results.
"They said they needed to have a better feel of the workload so they
could determine a cost analysis," Knorr said. "We provided that work
to them in early summer of 1995."
The last Knorr heard about the matter was the summer of 1995, when an
ATSDR official said he wanted to ask the military for the money to do
the analysis.
Michael Greenwell, a spokesman for ATSDR, said his agency did not have
the money - which he estimated at $300,000 - to analyze the results
even though the military agreed to fund the test.
Is burn study a moot point?
He said the agency felt the analysis was not a priority because the
Army stopped burning the propellant.
"We know the community is concerned about past exposures, but our
primary concern is current exposures," he said. "This data would
probably be valuable if we could get the resources."
"I don't think the data is sufficient enough to know whether there is
a health threat," he said.
Stetson Hall of the county said he forgot about the test results, but
he said the state should have told the county where the project stood.
"I guess there was some problem with quality control ... but over
time you just forget about it," he said. "What defused the issue is
they stopped the practice anyway."
Even though the practice has stopped, Knorr and others said the
results are important to help determine the effect of past activities
on public health.
"It's still applicable because the test would indicate estimates of
carcinogens released," he said. "Theoretically, you could do air
modeling to take into consideration where the burning was done on base
and estimate off-site exposures that could have occurred."
In November, Knorr said he pursued the matter with the federal agency.
But in December, Greenwell said the agency still has no plans to
analyze the data.
Kahn, an air-toxics monitoring expert with the EPA in Lexington, said
that, like McGrath, he went to Utah to make sure the burn followed a
set procedure.
"There was a final report issued describing the results," Kahn said.
"There wasn't any significant findings to the extent that there were
appreciable amounts of different materials found."
"The whole thing was crazy anyway"
When told the results have not been compiled, Kahn said he would try
to find the report he was referring to and call back. He later
acknowledged that there were no results.
"There was not enough information to come to any conclusions," he
said. "We did get some results, but not complete results. There was
supposed to be some data to follow, but I never received it."
Kahn questioned the study. "The whole thing was crazy anyway," he
said. "I didn't see it as real issue with the way the bag-burning was
done and how it was done. I just don't think the open burning could
have caused any real contamination."
However, a site evaluation at an artillery range at Camp Grayling in
Michigan found high concentrations of 2,4-DNT - which is found in
artillery propellant - in the soil.
Joel Feigenbaum of Sandwich, a community activist who had worked from
1986 to 1992 to stop the practice of propellant-bag burning, expressed
outrage that the test results have not been released.
"This is a perfect case study of how the public health bureaucracy
works at all levels, and it's a head-in-the-sand policy," he said.
"How is it possible that information that could have helped improve a
health study design was never analyzed?"
Feigenbaum was referring to a federal health study of the Upper Cape
that has been criticized for its weak study design. "If we had found
out about possible exposures, it could have only improved the study."
Persistent female lung cancer on the Upper Cape - which could be
linked to the propellant burning - has not been explained, he said.
"This is another example of how Knorr does not want to know the
results because he doesn't want to be in the position of pointing a
finger at the polluter," he said. "He would much rather walk around
the problem and say high cancer rates on the Upper Cape are an act of
God or a fluke of nature. He will never grab onto an exposure pathway.
Here he is offered the data, and he doesn't want it."
Propellant still used on camp
Analysis of the data is not only important for information about
possible past exposures, but for current activities, Feigenbaum said.
Even though the propellant is recyled and not burned, propellant is
still used in artillery firing at the base.
"Huge billows of smoke issue from those guns," he said. "What
happens to that propellant after it enters the air?"
Asked why community activists never followed up on the test burn
results, Feigenbaum said the community had little faith in a test paid
for by the military.
"We always figured that the results would either be inconclusive as
usual or if it showed positive exposures, the military would never
give the results to us," he said.
Also, he said community activists, who pursue environmental concerns
on their own time, were focusing on other pressing issues at the time.
"If I had nothing else to worry about, I would have followed up on
this," he said. "There are so many things to do. It's another
example of how hard it is for environmentalists to cover all the
bases. It's like keeping a little finger in a dike."
As for the cost of the test burn that has not been analyzed, the Times
filed Freedom of Information requests to the Massachusetts National
Guard and the Army branch that conducted the test in Utah.
The state Guard said the test cost $37,000. The Army said it cost
$55,000. But John Reinders, public affairs officer of the National
Guard Bureau in Alexandria, Va., said he has documentation listing
more than $400,000 in expenses to the Air National Guard.
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