Senate Democrats charge that KBR failed to protect troops in Iraq from “deadly poison”
by Julie Sullivan, The Oregonian
Monday August 03, 2009, 6:54 PM
Senate Democrats say the Army and the nation’s largest war contractor failed to protect troops from a “deadly poison” in Iraq and are demanding further investigation.
The statement came after a former Oregon Army National Guardsman and three other combat veterans testified Monday that since being exposed to hexavalent chromium in 2003, they have been chronically ill and that some of their fellow soldiers have died.
“Before my service to Iraq, I was physically fit. I used to run several miles without much effort,” said 42-year-old Rocky Bixby of Hillsboro, who struggled to speak between raspy coughs. “Now I have trouble walking from my house to my car. I simply run out of breath.”
Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-North Dakota, called the Army’s investigation so far into the exposure “tragically inadequate,” and likened it to the government’s mishandling of Agent Orange after Vietnam. “The Defense Department failed to protect our troops,” Dorgan said. “And I believe they are downplaying this in part because it is an embarrassment to them.”
The Army has defended its actions and last year the Defense Health Board, an independent review body, agreed with the Army. Defense contractor Kellogg Brown & Root has maintained in statements that its actions have not harmed troops.
The Houston firm provides almost all basic services for the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan. But they have been the frequent target in 20 oversight hearings conducted by Dorgan.
Last week the Defense Department’s inspector general found the company that KBR’s shoddy electrical work failed to protect a Green Beret electrocuted in the shower. Last spring the inspector general found KBR provided wastewater for bathing at one U.S. base in Iraq, causing skin infections and diarrhea. U.S. taxpayers have paid KBR millions in bonuses to restore Iraqi oil production.
Workers — civilians as well as U.S. troops — were exposed to hexavalent chromium as KBR raced to repair a water treatment plant near Basra to get the oil flowing again in 2003.
But the troops’ exposure to the cancer-causing chemical didn’t come to light until a June 2008 oversight hearing. Ed Blacke, a fomer KBR safety official testified that he was sent home from Iraq in 2003 after raising concerns about the reddish-orange powder piled at the plant.
Blacke told Dorgan’s committee that in addition to KBR employees, hundreds of U.S. troops were surrounded by the toxic powder as they slept, ate and patrolled at the Qarmat Ali plant between April and August 2003.
Among them: members of the 1st Battalion-162nd Infantry, the first Oregon Guard members into Iraq, as well as their Indiana and West Virginia counterparts.
The troops learned of the toxin when the state military departments and the Pentagon sent notification letters out earlier this year. At the Monday hearing, the four veterans say they recalled the reddish dust that spilled from100 pound bags that they used for protection from snipers — and for furniture.
They recalled wind storms that made the soldiers look like “orange powdered donuts.” They recalled the constant metallic taste that one veteran described like “a mouthful of pennies.”
But they were never told to use masks and other protective gear they had carried into combat. Their constant nose bleeds, skin sores and headaches were written off by KBR officials and Army medics as allergies to desert dust.
“Within two months, you could shine a light into my nasal cavity through a hole that had eaten through to the outside of my nose,” testified Russell Kimberling, a former Indiana National Guard commander who was medically evacuated to Germany after two months. Kimberling returned to guarding the plant in June 2003 until in August, when KBR employees showed up in full personal protection suits.
“They did not see fit to inform us that for safety purposes, we should’ve been doing the same,” he said. The Indiana Guard commander escort KBR is currently in hospice care with terminal lung cancer.Still, Kimberling testified that KBR officials downplayed what they found, describing the chemical, used as a corrosion fighter, as a “mild irritant” and that one would “literally have to bathe” in it for harm to occur. Experts told Dorgan’s committee last year that exposure to a grain of sand’s worth of hexavalent chromium over a cubic meter would greatly increase the risk of cancer.
In September 2003 the plant was shuttered, and eventually cleaned up. In October the Army administered 137 blood tests. The men never received any written results.
At Monday’s Senate’s Democratic Policy Committee hearing, an epidemiologist and the Environmental Protection Agency’s foremost expert on hexavalent chromium testified that the toxin would have largely been out of the troops’ bodies by the timing of tests. Herman Gibb, who spent his career at the EPA, likened it to “giving a breathalyzer to a person three days after they were pulled over for erratic driving.”
Gibb said further study, based on the military’s medical records, was needed, as well as ongoing medical evaluation and care. Congress is looking at a national registry for exposure.
Meanwhile, the Oregon Legislature has tried to provide some care. This summer the Legislature, led by Rep. Chip Shields of Portland, approved funds for soldiers who develop cancer as a result.
Some soldiers are also going to court. Bixby is one of five current or former Oregon Army National Guard suing KBR, as are dozens of soldiers in other states.
Bixby, who still works as a public safety officer at Oregon Heath & Science University, told the senators that after receiving his notification from the Guard earlier this year, the non-smoker finally had a chest X-ray.
“The doctors discovered I have a node on my lung.” (click HERE for the original article)
