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Could the same mysterious ailments many Persian Gulf veterans say
they're experiencing plague residents on the Wasatch Front?
Maybe not tomorrow, but years from now Utahns could find themselves
suffering from fatigue, body aches, rashes, memory loss and other
health problems, and their children could come into the world with
birth defects, opponents of the U.S. Army's chemical weapons
incinerator in Tooele County said Saturday.
A Desert Storm veteran, a former U.S. Senate staffer, a medical
researcher and a Salt Lake mother were among a group of speakers who
made a connection between so-called gulf war syndrome, exposure to
even the lowest levels of chemical agent and the future health of the
Salt Lake Valley's population. They said many Utahns could develop
health problems if the incinerator, which releases minute and
ostensibly harmless amounts of agent into the atmosphere, is allowed
to continue burning the nation's largest stockpile of obsolete
chemical weapons.
They said because the Pentagon denied for years that soldiers were
exposed to nerve agents, then admitted recently that more than 20,000
were exposed in March of 1991, the official word on incinerator
emissions can't be trusted.
"The Pentagon and the Army have told us we are not being exposed to
dangerous levels of chemical agent, and we frankly don't believe
that," said Kim Smith, co-founder of the local Families Against
Incineration Risk. "What I'm worried is going to happen is 20 years
from now they're going to send a team of scientists to the Wasatch
Front . . . to study our high rate of cancer, birth defects and
reproductive disorders."
Craig Williams, spokesman for the Kentucky-based Chemical Weapons
Working Group, said the Army has postponed plans to build chemical
weapons incinerators in Indiana and Maryland because it is developing
more advanced methods of disposal that would not release particulates
into the air. Russia and Japan recently rejected incineration as a
method to dispose of their chemical weapons, he said. He suggested the
Tooele incinerator be shut down until cleaner technology can replace
it.
"With $30 million on a public relations campaign, you can make
anything look safe," Williams said of the Army's incinerator.
Williams said the environmental groups have evidence of nine airborne
releases of chemical agent from CAMDS, a test incinerator in Tooele,
and three releases of live agent from the Army's prototype incinerator
on Johnston Island in the Pacific Ocean. Furthermore, he said, there
is evidence that live agent was released into the atmosphere from the
Tooele incinerator itself - once on Aug. 24, just two days after it
started up, and again in September. The Army has said no airborne
releases have occurred, but the incinerator has been temporarily shut
down several times.
Jim Tuite, a former Senate investigator and founder of the National
Gulf War Research Foundation, said there is no such thing as a safe
exposure level when it comes to chemical nerve agent. He said the
government "has been caught lying repeatedly" about the exposure of
Americans to various tests, from nuclear explosions to radiation
experiments, and the public must be diligent in demanding the truth.
Paul Sullivan, a cavalry scout during Desert Storm and a board member
of the National Gulf War Resource Center, said he used the Freedom of
Information Act to secure documents that showed chemicals were in fact
released during the Persian Gulf conflict.
"If there is a leak of (live agent) from the Tooele Army Depot or one
of the (storage) bunkers, residents of Salt Lake City may end up
having gulf war illnesses coming to a neighborhood near you," Sullivan
said.
The speakers also compared Persian Gulf ailments to difficulties
experienced by some Dugway Proving Ground workers who may have been
exposed to a variety of toxins during the Cold War testing of germ,
nerve gas and radiological weapons.
Saturday's symposium, held at Westminster College and sponsored by the
Chemical Weapons Working Group and Families Against Incineration
Risks, was held to provide an opportunity for Persian Gulf sufferers
to compare their symptoms to those of afflicted Dugway workers.
Earl Davenport, a former Dugway worker who said he was sprayed with a
chemical compound, said he has had a heart attack, a bad back,
numbness in his feet, sleep apnea and other health problems that he
attributes to the exposure, despite the fact that he was also a heavy
smoker.
The Chemical Weapons Working Group, the Sierra Club and the Vietnam
Veterans of America Foundation are scheduled to appear before the Utah
Solid and Hazardous Waste Board in March to seek a shutdown of the
incinerator on safety grounds. The groups are also asking a federal
judge to close the plant.
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