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May 28, 2006

Moved by guilt over Agent Orange, Vietnam veterans vow help

LOUIS HANSEN, THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT, May 28, 2006

Retired Navy Capt. Allen “Wes” Weseleskey, 70, of Virginia Beach spent 14 months in Vietnam flying helicopters along rivers, providing cover for patrols. He was awarded the Navy Cross and other honors. VICKI CRONIS/THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT

VIRGINIA BEACH - Retired Navy Capt. Allen "Wes" Weseleskey and his fellow helicopter pilots picked up odd assignments during their wartime tour in Vietnam.

Some of those duties seemed safer than others - such as flying protection alongside Air Force planes as they doused the triple canopy jungles with the herbicide Agent Orange to deny cover for the enemy.

Four decades later, though, the Navy men share regrets about their role in the mission known as Operation Ranch Hand. Buddies went sterile. They've been stricken with diabetes or leukemia. Their children have been born with deformed spines.

For some veterans, as their own ailments swelled, so did guilt. Now they're doing something about it.

Weseleskey, who lives in Virginia Beach, and a small group of other Vietnam War vets have raised more than $20,000 in the past year to provide medical relief for suffering Vietnamese children.

They hope to bring comfort to a place where they once fought, and perhaps find peace for themselves.

"I'd like to say I don't feel guilty," said Weseleskey, who received the Navy Cross for valor during a March 1968 firefight. "But I can't say that."

After the war, the men stayed in touch. Some joined the Seawolf Association, a veterans group for certain Vietnam helicopter pilots and crew. They had shared river combat in the Mekong Delta - some flew helicopters while others directed boat operations in the small waterways - which drew them tight.

Peter Shay spent a year in Vietnam as a junior lieutenant, piloting a Seawolf helicopter and providing cover for river boat units.

Shay held on to his combat memories even as he progressed in his civilian career in marketing. He wanted to return to Vietnam, in part to start efforts to recover fellow helicopter crew members missing in action.

Until recently, going back to the Southeast Asian country was difficult. The Communist-backed North Vietnamese seized control of the divided country two years after U.S. troops left their South Vietnamese allies and have remained in power. In 1986, the Vietnamese government began to loosen restrictions on foreign travel and investment.

About six years ago, Shay made his trip back. "It was tough to go back the first time," said Shay, now retired and living in New York City.

Shay returned several times, met former allies and enemies, and embraced a new culture. "I don't know how any people could hate them."

In June 2004, Shay organized a conference in New York with some other vets and officers from the former South and North Vietnamese armies.

The Navy pilots wanted the Vietnamese to help them discover what had happened to two missing airmen. The Vietnamese agreed but asked something in return: help in coping with the effects of Agent Orange contamination .

The request struck a chord with the American vets. It brought them together with their long-held regret over having participated in the Agent Orange program.

The two sides promised to help each other.

The military estimates that nearly 10 percent of Vietnam was sprayed with herbicide between 1961 and 1971. Nineteen million gallons of Agent Orange and other herbicides were dropped on the Vietnamese .

According to the Department of Veterans Affairs, exposure to Agent Orange is known to cause such maladies as certain types of acne, diabetes, nerve disorders, leukemia, Hodgkin's disease and rare forms of prostate and respiratory cancers. Symptoms can take years to emerge.

Researchers also have found a link between the birth defect spina bifida, an abnormality of the spine and brain, among the children of vets exposed to the chemical.

Steven Stellman, a professor of epidemiology at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, said the Vietnamese probably have faced health problems similar to those of American vets.

Stellman, who has researched Agent Orange exposure for more than a decade, estimated as many as 4.8 million Vietnamese were directly sprayed with herbicide.

Jerry Wages spent 34 years in the Navy, including 14 months leading a riverine combat group in the Mekong Delta. The 77-year-old retired captain has seen friends suffer and lose battles with cancer.

Wages' doctors say he has the early stages of a rare leukemia likely caused by his exposure during riverine duty in the jungles. He shrugs it off. "It's not real bad at this time," Wages said from his Florida home.

Weseleskey and Shay also were exposed, during ground and aerial missions, although neither has shown symptoms.

"I got lucky," Weseleskey said.

Other veterans in the Seawolf Association rejected the suggestion of helping Vietnamese children. Despite Vietnam's improved relations with the United States, many veterans "feel we shouldn't be helping our former enemy," Weseleskey said.

"A lot of people won't do this," Shay said. "A lot of them still have ghosts in the closet."

The men broke from the Seawolf Association and started an independent charity.

The organization - known as the Seawolf Agent Orange Relief Effort Foundation - has drummed up support mostly from other vets. Contributions have trickled in. Wages' daughter requested donations to the charity rather than gifts for her wedding. Guests raised $7,000.

The men want to establish new cardiac operating rooms in major hospitals in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon), the former capitals of North and South Vietnam, respectively. Each will cost about $30,000 to install and equip.

"We'll have a continual need to help the kids in the delta," Wages said. "Little things - toothbrushes, vitamins."

Shay also returned to Vietnam with an American heart surgeon and used the donations to pay for heart surgery for an 11-year-old Vietnamese boy.

The men are unsure whether the defects are directly caused by Agent Orange, but they still feel a responsibility. They have no firm plans to travel back to Vietnam, but they expect to return.

For Weseleskey, 70 , it would be his first trip back since the war. "It's been a difficult thing," he said. The charity, he added, "is a venting valve."

Reach Louis Hansen at (757) 446-2322 or louis.hansen@pilotonline.com.

HOW TO HELP
For Agent Orange Relief Foundation information, go to www.saoref.org.

Posted by bhola at 11:25 PM | Comments (0)

Cleanup, demolition slow for K-25 in Oak Ridge

ELIZABETH A. DAVIS, LEXINGTON HERALD

OAK RIDGE, Tenn. - The federal government spent 18 months building the massive K-25 uranium enrichment plant in this once-secret city for the World War II-era Manhattan Project.

Tearing it down has been much slower.

After the plant shut down in 1987, nearly 10 years passed before work began to decontaminate it and turn it and the other buildings on a sprawling 1,500-acre site into a private industrial park.

Another decade has gone by since then and the vacant K-25 building is in disrepair but still standing.

The Department of Energy cleanup project began in 1996, and a year later the site was renamed the East Tennessee Technology Park. Since then, it has faced several delays because of funding and safety issues.

Original estimates had the project costing $5 billion and taking generations to complete. But recent work on the technology park was split into two contracts that will together cost about $2 billion.

A completion date of September 2008 has been pushed back to summer of 2009. Buildings not occupied by the deadline could be torn down to save money on maintenance.

"It was very aggressive, very optimistic," said Steve McCracken, DOE's environmental manager, of the timeline. "For various reasons it will take longer and cost more. It's just huge. We run into things every day."

"If we have safety issues, we're not going to push the schedule to our detriment," he said.

K-25 is the name of the site's centerpiece, a mile-long U-shaped building considered the largest in the world when it was built from 1943-45. It is also the name of the entire site that consists of many other buildings - known as K-33, K-31 and K-29, some built after the war.

K-25 enriched uranium in a process called gaseous diffusion. The uranium was fed into the nearby Y-12 plant to make highly enriched uranium that was used in the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.

Many employees didn't know the nature of their work until the bombing was announced on the radio.

During the Cold War, gaseous diffusion was the only process used to enrich uranium, and K-25 became a forerunner of other plants.

Farmland covering 59,000 acres was selected in 1942 to be one of the secret sites of the Manhattan Project. A city sprang up almost instantly and had 75,000 residents at its peak in 1945 working at K-25, Y-12 and the X-10 reactor.

Yellow radiation warning signs still dot the premises at K-25 but the armed guards at the entry gates are gone.

Currently, 25 companies are signed on as tenants in some of the old, refurbished buildings through leases negotiated by the Community Reuse Organization of East Tennessee.

"We'd always like to have many more clients visit and we're working diligently to get there, but we have achieved some level of success we're proud of," CROET President Lawrence Young said.

CROET is in charge of finding tenants, negotiating the leases and sometimes maintaining buildings under lease.

The current tenants include a waste management company and an auto part component manufacturer. A motorsports race course has even been proposed.

Companies looking at the technology park have typical concerns about locating at a former uranium enrichment site with aging buildings. But Young says contamination shouldn't be much of an issue.

"There's reams of data that shows a worker is going to be safe in that environment just like they would be at any other industrial or business park, and by and large most companies accept that," he said.

Still, two of the biggest buildings on the site - K-31 and K-33 - have been cleaned out and remain vacant. BRI Energy LLC of Florida announced tentative plans earlier in May to use K-31 for an ethanol production facility.

The buildings were grouped with K-29 in a $356 million cleanup contract awarded to BNFL Inc., now called BNG America. The company removed more than 156,000 tons of material and equipment from the buildings that together cover 4.8 million square feet of floor space. It was one of the largest decontamination and decommissioning projects in the country.

Officials later determined that the 650,000-square-foot K-29 needed to be torn down because it was not structurally sound, and Bechtel Jacobs started demolition earlier this year. Completion was targeted for July.

The buildings and others still vacant could come to the same fate as K-29 if leases cannot be signed in time.

"They are big buildings and as a result are expensive to maintain," Young said.

"It just becomes a function of economics. If we can get tenants into those buildings that would ultimately allow us to maintain the buildings then obviously we would be fulfilling our mission and the buildings would be leased long term. Conversely if we're not successful in doing that, then the department would have to make a decision with regard to the buildings."

Officials say they will begin tearing down K-25 next April and finish in two years.

An enormous edifice from any angle, K-25 looks like an abandoned warehouse with peeling holes in the roof and exterior walls.

Cleaning up K-25 has been slow because of the age of the building and its lingering contamination. The roof was last repaired in 1994, and water has leaked in and onto the operating floor, making it "not safe to walk on or under," said Jack Howard, manager of the three-building project.

"This is an example of one that sat too long," McCracken said during a recent tour.

Now workers are draining and inspecting equipment and about 400 miles of piping inside the building. They use tiny cameras to check for residue.

The K-25 building cleanup was combined in a five-year Bechtel Jacobs contract worth $1.6 billion that also includes other parts of the Oak Ridge reservation.

Preservationists, who believe K-25 has historic significance, are hoping workers will leave a building footprint of the building or the north tower that forms the bottom of the U. The National Park Service is looking at creating a Manhattan Project park including several sites around the country including K-25.

McCracken moved to Oak Ridge with his family in 1947 when his father worked with the Atomic Energy Commission. He understands the concerns.

"I think Oak Ridge has a tremendous history that should be preserved," he said.

"You can't leave those big buildings with contaminants in them. What we have to do is save the legacy."

As for the future, Young hopes the changes will draw more industry and not just tourists.

"Hopefully someone drives past who may not be from the area and they see it as simply a business industrial site," he says, "and it's not until they read the historic markers that they find that it was once the K-25 site."

Posted by bhola at 11:14 PM | Comments (0)

Fear of Flowers

KATHY KELLY, ELECTRONC IRAQ, MAY 27, 2006

"Anfal." It means, "to take everything."

In 1988, Saddam Hussein ordered a genocidal campaign, the Anfal Operation, against 4,500 defenseless Kurdish villages in northern Iraq. 180,000 people who couldn't escape are believed to have been buried in unknown mass graves. The Iraqi military deliberately contaminated water sources with TNT, cut down trees, and put TNT and land mines in the foundations of destroyed homes.

For the past four days, we've listened to Azad, whose name means "the free person," pour out memories of what he endured during that time.

"Inside, I am crying," says Azad, "remembering those awful days. We were shouting, crying, but nobody heard." He was twenty years old at the time.

He worked as a nurse at a small surgical center in Takya, southwest of Sulaymaniyah. The Iraqi military attacked the city of Halabja with nerve gas on March 17th, 1988. 5,000 people were killed. Four days later, the Iraqi military shelled Takya. The surgical center staff worked frantically to save surviving villagers. Some came to their center, suffering from seizures, severe disorientation and other neurological effects of nerve gas. The health care workers took their tractor out to surrounding areas to try and rescue others. Then they organized everyone to flee as soon as possible.

"Even the animals could sense something was happening," Azad recalls, marveling over the memory of animals following them out of the village. "Cats and dogs proceeded side by side, even though this is not their nature, with their tails hanging down."

He and 14 other health care workers helped lead 600 people in a harrowing 760 kilometer escape over mountains, on foot, carrying only as much first aid and bits of bread as they could stuff into backpacks.

The Iraqi military pursued them, by air and by land, shelling the defenseless evacuees with more chemical weaponry, which forced them to travel only at night, in total darkness.

"We didn't even have one gas mask," Azad recalls. After the first chemical weapon attack, the health care workers realized they must inject themselves with atrophine sulfate so that they could help others survive. "The first dose had to be two milligrams," Azad explained. "You feel dizzy, your heart beats very fast, and your mouth becomes completely dry and numb so that you can't swallow. When a rash breaks out on your skin, then you know that the injection has succeeded."

"All actions to save the patients had to be done immediately," says Azad, "or the patients would die." He learned to quickly dispense antidotes to nerve gas. Recalling theory that he'd studied in nursing school, he swiftly learned to deliver babies and, in one instance, to complete the amputation of a child's hand after a bomb had nearly severed it completely. Every waking moment was a matter of life and death emergency.

"I would need days", says Azad, "to describe one family. I will never forget them."

He tells of a tailor from the village of Sewsenan who made clothes for the surgical center. He had four girls aged 14, 12, 8 and 6. Azad was very close to the girls. They had green eyes, dark blonde hair and very fair skin. The father was handsome, the mother beautiful. In his free time, Azad would visit their house, and they made him feel like part of the family. When the bombing began, a rocket landed on their home. The tailor hurried home from the mosque and found his wife and his daughters, all dead.

Azad remembers walking by night on the 10th of May when they were encircled by Iraqi military camps and had come upon Peshmerga troops following a 12 hour battle between the Peshmerga and the Iraqi military. The Peshmerga told them they could choose either to stay where they were and face almost certain death, or try to cross a road which required first climbing a slippery, steep cliff and then bolting across a road in hopes of not being seen.

Peshmerga troops helped each of the people climb the cliff. They all crossed the road safely but then went the wrong way and were headed into the camp of Kurdish Iraqi military. The Kurdish Iraqi military shouted, "Don't come near the camp! If you do, we will start to shoot!" But then, to help them, they illuminated the route using flares.

That same night, when they were walking in total darkness along a road, people in the front suddenly stopped. "Doctor, Doctor!" people whispered to him in alarm. "They need you in front. They smell something strange." He made his way to the front of the line. Because they were surrounded by military camps in the hills, they couldn't turn on a flashlight. He used his "locally" made mask, cupped his torch in his hand, and bent to smell the ground where people were pointing.

"I told them, be quiet," said Azad, smiling softly. "We are safe. It's only flowers."

He recalls another point when they came to a river with a very strong current. The Iraqi military had opened a dammed lake so that refugees would find it difficult to cross the rivers. But fishermen helped them by letting them use rafts they had fashioned by laying wooden planks across tires.

After crossing the river, they rested for two days. But the Iraqi military began new chemical weapon attacks. There was no way to return and help the victims in the towns under attack. They had to press forward toward the Iranian border.

The Iraqi military followed them, attacking first by chemical weapons and then by conventional means.

Finally, in June of '88, they reached a refugee camp near Iran.

Yesterday, Azad took us to a mountain top facing a series of mountain ranges where, before the Anfal Operation, Kurdish villagers had lived as farmers and shepherds. He pointed to an opening between two of the mountains, a gap which was the only route into the mountain valley where they had found protection from the Iraqi military attacks.

We stood above a small cave. "Yes, we hid in caves like this and under trees, in the daytime," he said, "and then at night, single file, holding on to the belt of the person in front of us, we walked, trying to reach a road so that we could pass behind the mountain into a safer area. If it were not for that mountain, I would not be here." He stoops in front of a thorny weed. Now this is too ripe, but when these grasses are just growing in the springtime, you can peel the stem and inside it is very sweet. This is what we ate for one week."

He repeats, several times, that he never would have imagined, during that time, when he could barely imagine living till the next day that he would one day stand on a mountain, free and safe, and point to the places where he lived through such horrors.

Even now, people who were part of that journey sometimes spot Azad in the market or other public spots and race to embrace him, covering him with kisses.

"Now we can hear each other's stories," Azad says as Azad says as he gazes at calm valleys where thousands of villagers once lived. "I hope the whole world can become like one village."

And he hopes that his children will never fear the smell of flowers.

Kathy Kelly (kathy@vcnv.org) co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence.

Posted by bhola at 01:06 AM | Comments (0)

Linking arms of compassion

THUY HA, NHAN DAN

Mrs Canh and child at the Peace Village.

More than 100 disabled children affected by Agent Orange in Hoa Binh (Peace) Village, Hanoi enjoy not only treatment for their illnesses but also the love and care of foster mothers, brothers and sisters who want to help and share with them their losses and disadvantages.

Joy is here, sadness is here

Ms Canh is one of several foster mothers who work at the Peace Village. She has been coming for seven years and knows the names and details of most of the children. They say they love her very much although she is very strict.

Ms Canh is slim and looks younger than her 35-years. She always has a bright smile. "I have to stay young, strong and optimistic for the sake of my children."

She has been off work only once since she started working at the village. "I am very busy, but very happy. Apart from my mother and relatives in the countryside, this is my second family. Joy and sadness are all here."

She talks in an honest and unaffected way and her many stories about the children often move people to tears. Once, she was distributing socks to the children. She told them to come to her to collect their socks but Chien did not come. "Chien, why don’t you come and get your socks," mother Canh asked. Chien showed her his two artificial legs and said: "I don’t have legs so why should I have to get socks?" He was joking but Mrs Canh says "I felt heartbroken and full of pity for him."

She teaches her charges everything from housework to how to help their parents. In her spare time she takes the children to market so that they will learn how to assess goods and haggle for bargains.

During her early days at the Peace Village, Ms Canh, like many others, was horrified by the disabilities caused by Agent Orange. The children were innocent and full of pain. Some were angry. The mothers found it hard to deal with. For the first ten days Ms Canh could not even manage to teach a simple song to the children.

Ms Canh is one of two mothers in charge of the "special education" class, the most challenging class in the school. There are always at least 30 children in the class of different ages and suffering from a variety of illnesses.

She has to do the work of a teacher, a nurse and when necessary a cook. She teaches her children the smallest things, such as how to greet people, feed themselves and comb their own hair.

Helping children to rely on themselves

Volunteer from Hanoi National Economic University with the children.

Although Ms Nhan is not a staff member of the village, she has taught drawing to the children every week for the past three years. Drawing is one of two vocational training classes for children of the village.

Ms Nhan brings with her brushes, pastels, paper to draw on and a creative style of working which helps stimulate the children's minds.

Little Nga, one of her students who has recently returned from a Swedish award ceremony for upholders of Children's Rights, told her: "Many asked me for my signatures. My pink signature was the smallest but the prettiest and the strongest among all the dark-coloured signatures."

Ms Nhan says her students are obedient and some are very clever. Nhai, Nga and Chien draw very well. Over the last few years her students have won many awards at drawing competitions in Vietnam and abroad.

The work of the foster mothers is shared by volunteers from universities in Hanoi. Young, enthusiastic volunteers are always to be found in the village working with the children.

"Paving stones along the way," as acts of compassion are called, help these children to improve their physical and mental health, and so integrate into normal life.

Says Ms Phuong, director of the Peace Village: "Almost all the children make some progress, more or less, depending on their abilities and the severity of their ailments. But even though we have tried our hardest, only one fifth of our children are able to integrate into society."

Posted by bhola at 12:13 AM | Comments (0)

The fog of war: Agent Orange still poisons Vietnam's water, soil and blood

MITCH MOXLEY, MAISSONEUVE MAGAZINE

Trinh Minh Lam still remembers the first time he was sprayed with Agent Orange. Marching near the Cambodian border in the summer of 1967, an American warplane flew overhead, and then a mysterious garlic-smelling fog descended. Within days, the surrounding jungle’s leaves wilted and died, turning lush foliage into a barren landscape. On the long march to battles in the south, Trinh, now nearly blind and fighting liver disease, consumed food and water tainted by the fog. “Only after reunification did we learn about Agent Orange,” he says. “Then we were sick.”

Between 1962 and 1971 (during the Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon administrations), under the code name Operation Ranch Hand, US forces sprayed some 45 million litres of herbicides over a total area of 5 million acres of South Vietnamese jungle, including a half-million acres used for crops. Named after the coloured stripes on their shipping barrels, the chemicals Agents Blue, White, Purple, Pink, Green and Orange had a singular purpose: to destroy the plant life that provided cover and food supplies for Vietcong guerrillas and North Vietnamese soldiers. Some areas in southern and central Vietnam were so heavily defoliated that what was once triple-canopy jungle is now barely more than grass and shrubs. About 65 percent of the herbicides used were Agent Orange, a variety favoured for its effectiveness; Agent Orange is made with equal parts of 2,4,5–T and 2,4–D chemicals and it contains a highly toxic and resilient contaminant known as TCDD, a dioxin by-product of the herbicide’s chemical creation.

Posted by bhola at 12:09 AM | Comments (0)

Congressman Higgins co-sponsors legislation calling for investigation into the health effects of chemical exposure on nation's veterans

TEXT OF CONGRESSMAN HIGGINS' PRESS RELEASE

In honor of the upcoming Memorial Day holiday and in remembrance of the sacrifices made by veterans of the Armed Forces, Congressman Brian Higgins (NY-27) this week cosponsored H.R. 4259 calling for the creation of the Veterans' Right to Know Commission.

The Commission would be given the task of comprehensively investigating the usage of chemical and biological substances used by the US military during wartime and their effect on the men and women of our Armed Services. It would be comprised of honorable citizens and distinguished veterans of the United States Armed Forces. Higgins also inserted remarks into the official Congressional Record honoring the brave men and women of the Armed Forces.

"This Memorial Day, we honor the brave men and women of the nation's Armed Forces who gave their lives in service, and we recognize all veterans, who courageously defended the United States in times of war and peace," said Higgins. "All across the country in small towns and large cities, communities come together to thank veterans for their patriotism, devotion, and commitment. We also send our prayers and thoughts to those who have lost loved ones -- to young children who have lost a parent, to husbands and wives who have lost spouses, and to mothers and fathers who have lost sons and daughters. Memorial Day is not only a day to celebrate and pay respect to the lives of our soldiers, but it is an opportunity for the nation to renew its commitment to honor America's veterans and to pledge to never abandon them or their families, no matter what it takes."

Higgins cosponsored the Veteran's Right to Know Bill because of his concern regarding the consequences of exposure to chemical and biological agents like Vx nerve gas, Sarin Nerve Gas and E. coli, which have long been debated by those in the scientific community. Exposure to Agent Orange, an herbicide used for ten years during the Vietnam War to defoliate and destroy crops, increases the risk of cancer, and the Air Force and the US Department of Veteran Affairs now officially recognize that exposure to this chemical plays a role in the formation of diabetes. However, some fifty years following initial exposure, other potential health effects of these chemical and biological agents have on the human body are not fully understood.

Higgins believes it is imperative to determine whether exposure to those agents, tested on unknowing military personnel by the Department of Defense between 1962 and 1974, correlates with life threatening diseases. "The American people deserve answers and this Commission will help provide those answers," said Higgins.

"Thousands of brave veterans of foreign wars reside in my district, individuals who have put their very existence on the line to defend every right, ideal and freedom that this noble country exemplifies. We owe the passage of this legislation to these men and women and to all those who have been exposed to Agent Orange and to other destructive chemicals," said Higgins.

Higgins was particularly moved to co-sponsor this legislation by the story of Western New York native Nelson C. Hughes. Last year, Mr. Hughes passed away from cancer after being exposed to Agent Orange in Vietnam. He was one of the nation's leading advocates of Vietnam veterans suffering from Agent Orange exposure. "I call on Congress to honor Mr. Hughes and all U.S. veterans this Memorial Day by passing this bill," added Higgins.

Higgins also addressed the veterans who are threatened by identity theft due to an information leak at the VA. On May 22, 2006, the VA announced that the names, Social Security numbers, disability ratings, and dates of birth of up to 26.5 million veterans have been stolen.

"I want veterans to know that there are those in Congress willing to stand up for them. I have joined as a cosponsor of the Veterans' Identity Protection Act of 2006," said Higgins. "This bill calls for an investigation of the Administration's mishandling of the leak. The bill would also provide veterans with one year of free credit monitoring as well as one free credit report each year for two years after the end of credit monitoring. In addition, if a veteran has been affected by the stolen data, they may visit my website for more information or they may contact my office at 716-852-3501 in Buffalo or 716-484-0729 in Jamestown so that we may help in any way we can."

Posted by bhola at 12:04 AM | Comments (0)

May 27, 2006

Agent Orange exposure may be associated with an increased risk Of biochemical progression in prostate cancer

MEDICAL NEWS TODAY, MAY 27, 2006

Of 869 patients who underwent radical prostatectomy at 3 VA Medical Centers, a history of Agent Orange exposure was identified in 10% of patients.

Patients with prior Agent Orange exposure were more likely to be younger, have T1 disease, lower serum PSA levels, but similar Gleason scores. Interestingly, although agent orange exposure was not associated with an increased incidence of more advanced Gleason scores or pathologic stage, patients in this group had an independently increased risk of biochemical progression (Hazard ratio = 1.95, 95% CI 1.22 to 3.11, p = 0.005).

This study with a small sample size warrants further analysis of the impact of Agent Orange exposure in prostate cancer progression.

Posted by bhola at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)

May 24, 2006

Prostate Cancer and Agent Orange

S. BRUCE MALKOWICZ MD, UROLOGY TODAY

AUA 2006 - Epidemiology & Natural History Moderated Poster Session 4

A retrospective observational study by Wilson et al, [ABST. 127] described an evaluation of alpha 1-blocker use and the incidence of prostate cancer. The comparison was between men treated with quinazoline-based alpha 1-blockers and untreated men captured from the Lexington Kentucky, VA the state wide cancer registry, and SEER data. 61 prostate tumors were diagnosed among 4143 men treated with alpha blockers (1.47%) in contrast to 562 tumors in nearly 23,000 untreated men (2.44%), OR 0.596 95% CI[0.4570-0.7785]. Thus, men treated with alpha blockers had a 40% lower risk of developing prostate cancer. A potential mechanism was suggested through the apoptotic effect alpha blockers have on prostate cancer cells in vitro. These data suggest that further epidemiological study is warranted.

A further quantification of potential risks of androgen deprivation therapy was described in two abstracts evaluating the risk of diabetes mellitus by Kincade et al [ABST. 128] and bone fracture risk by Krupski et al, [ABST 129]. In the diabetes study, patients were treated with ADT for a mean of 59 months. An 11.4% incidence of de novo DM was noted after the initiation of therapy. In those patients with pre-existing diabetes a worsening of glycemic control [baseline fasting glucose and HbA1c] was seen in approximately a third of the patients. A pre-treatment BMI > 30 was predictive for de-novo diabetes OR 4.64, 95% CI [4.60-4.68] while vitamin D supplementation may have had a protective role OR5.7, 95% CI [5.11-6.385]. There was no data on development of de-nova diabetes in a control population, yet the data in aggregate on this cohort of 394 patients suggests that patients on ADT should be followed more aggressively for glycemic control and the development of diabetes.

In the study by Krupsi et al, a Medicare database was employed to evaluate 3055 patients on ADT. 570 (19%) experienced a fracture compared to 805 (15%) in 5522 controls. Of note, this risk fracture was noted over a relatively short period of 36 months of therapy. This and other studies suggest that men on ADT are at increased risk for bone fracture.

The impact of Agent Orange was evaluated in a VA data base of 1048 patients, 91 of which had a history of Agent Orange exposure. Shah, et al [ABST 131] report that this cohort of patients was similar in many respects yet tended to be younger and have a better stage presentation of disease. They did demonstrate a significant increased risk of biochemical failure OR 1.95 95% CI [1.22 - 3.11]. Given the rather small size of this cohort, further studies are required to better understand the potential effect of Agent Orange exposure on the natural history of prostate cancer.

Gilbert and colleagues [ABST 135] analyzed temporal trends in the National Health SEER (Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results program) from 1990 -2002. Using autoregressive quadratic time-series models it was demonstrated that incidence rates were quite stable from 1994 to 2002, yet a steady decline in mortality rates was noted 25.6/100,000 to 20.2/100, 00 in whites and 47.6/100,000 to 35/100,000 in African Americans. These data suggest a beneficial effect of screening yet other factors can also contribute to these findings.

Additionally, Meng et al [ABST 137] reviewed the CaPSURE registry of 11,182 men diagnosed between 1989 and 2004. A total of 833 [7.4%] men died during the mean follow-up of 5.2 years and 74% of these deaths were not related to prostate cancer. The major comorbidities associated with non CaP deaths were cardiovascular, other forms of neoplasm and pulmonary disease. Ethnicity and tumor characteristics contributed to risk of prostate cancer death.

Posted by bhola at 08:41 AM | Comments (0)

May 19, 2006

'Extreme Engineering': Researchers use bacteria to reduce uranium to safe levels

HANNAH HICKEY

While the Cold War ended decades ago, its legacy will live for centuries in toxic waste. In remote corners of the country from Tennessee to the Pacific Northwest, dozens of federal laboratories struggle to clean up contaminants left from 50 years of weapons programs. New results show a promising technique for cleaning up uranium from some of the most severely contaminated areas by harnessing the powers of microbes already in the soil.

"Toxic uranium is often found in groundwater at places where uranium was either mined or enriched to make weapons," said Craig Criddle, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford. "This uranium-contaminated water can migrate into surface waters, where it becomes a threat to organisms and water supplies. Excavation of contaminated soil or pumping and treating the water are prohibitively expensive and lead to additional disposal issues. An alternative is to stimulate naturally occurring subsurface microorganisms that can convert the dissolved uranium into a solid form that is not susceptible to transport by water."

For the past six years, a research team at Stanford headed by Criddle has worked with a research team at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee headed by Phil Jardine, a soil chemist and distinguished research staff scientist there, to develop a possible solution to the problem. The group's strategy took groundwater that originally contained more than 1,000 times the drinking-water regulatory limit for uranium and brought concentrations down to the limit. The technique and its early results are described in a pair of papers to appear June 15 in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, a publication of the American Chemical Society. The papers were published online on May 13.

Funding for the $4.6 million, six-year project was provided by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). The DOE Environmental Remediation Sciences Program (ERSP) supports basic research on bioremediation—the use of living organisms to clean up toxic waste—and aims to devise a safe, cost-effective solution to the problem of uranium contamination. It also oversees the Stanford-ORNL project and other field research projects at Oak Ridge and other locations. Until the early 1980s, the Oak Ridge laboratory enriched uranium for use in bombs. Wastewater was dumped in four unlined settling pits. When production ceased, lab officials drained the ponds, filled them with dirt and paved a parking lot the size of four football fields to cover the site.

That site is now home to an ERSP Field Research Center—the first DOE field test site for development of the science and technology needed to understand and predict long-term impacts of contamination and to mitigate those effects at 120 sites in 36 U.S. states and territories. The quantities are enormous: more than 475 billion gallons of contaminated groundwater; 75 million cubic meters of contaminated sediments; and 3 million cubic meters of leaking buried waste. The overarching DOE cleanup program has a budget of $220 billion and a timeline of more than 70 years to develop and implement solutions. This is the largest remediation effort of its type, and possibly the largest environmental cleanup ever attempted, Criddle said.

Among the most common contaminants at DOE sites are radioactive metals. These have spread over areas miles wide, making it impractical to store the dirt in closed containers or build barriers to separate the groundwater from drinking water. Uranium sticks to soil, making it impossible to remove efficiently by pumping contaminated groundwater to the surface and treating it there (where its removal creates another disposal problem). But uranium also doesn't stick well enough to soil—over time, it dissolves into the water and can be transported in the groundwater to surface waters, where it is a threat to wildlife and water supplies. In humans, uranium causes kidney damage and cancer.

Extreme bioengineering

The extreme conditions at the field site called for a wide range of skills that could only be supplied by a large and diverse team. Members of the Stanford group are Criddle and Professors Peter Kitanidis and Scott Fendorf; senior research engineer Wei-Min Wu; consulting Professor Olaf Cirpka; postdoctoral researcher Jian Luo; administrative associate Julie Stevens; and doctoral students Mike Fienen, Margy Gentile, Matt Ginder-Vogel and Jennifer Nyman. Their partners at ORNL include Jardine and about one dozen other researchers and staff. The Stanford-ORNL team also worked with the consulting firm RETEC to design and construct the field system.

An important initial decision was where to work. The Stanford-ORNL team chose to set up camp less than 20 feet from the edge of the parking lot. They targeted groundwater 45 feet down because field measurements indicated that this water carried high levels of uranium from the ponds. But the uranium was not the only thing present in the water. They also discovered a witches' brew of contaminants—the acidic mixture that was leftover from disposal of sulfuric, nitric and hydrochloric acids; toxic heavy metals; and solvents. Dealing with this mixture presented formidable technical challenges for the team but also was an opportunity to develop a strategy that could cut off contamination of the groundwater at its source.

The Stanford-ORNL team members developed a staged approach and employed an unusual amount of engineering to ensure process control, Criddle said. First, they prepared a region of the subsurface for microbial activity. This was accomplished by drilling wells and establishing a recirculation loop: Groundwater containing contaminants that would interfere with the uranium conversion was sucked to the surface, treated to remove those substances, then reinjected. The pH of the recirculating water was then increased from 3.6, roughly the acidity of vinegar, to 6, a level conducive to microbial growth.

After adjusting pH, the researchers provided weekly additions of ethanol to the recirculating water for more than a year. The ethanol stimulated growth of subterranean microbial populations that converted the uranium into an immobile form. After treatment, high levels of uranium remained on the soil, but the groundwater contained almost no uranium. Analysis of the soil-bound uranium confirmed that it was largely converted into the immobile form.

Bacteria are back

Bioremediation was used in the 1980s to clean up toxic organics, mainly spills of fuels and solvents. Bacteria basically ate the fuels—chomping down long-chain hydrocarbons—or they "breathed" the solvents and created nontoxic forms.

"Microorganisms also 'breathe' metals like uranium, converting it into a form that is immobile because it does not appreciably dissolve in water," said Nyman, a doctoral student whose laboratory studies helped to guide operations in the field. After microbes convert the uranium, it's "just sitting there, like a rock," Criddle said. "In future studies, we hope to see how stable we can make that 'rock.' Ideally, it will remain in that form for thousands of years."

[bhopal.net note: Oak Ridge, Tennessee, was left lethally contaminated by Union Carbide. The use of bacteria to "eat" radioactive contamination was pioneered by British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) in the UK well over a decade ago. BNFL's Chairman is Michael Parker, ex-CEO of Dow Chemical, which now owns Union Carbide]

Posted by bhola at 10:56 PM | Comments (0)

May 18, 2006

Poisoned town wants Saddam's chemical suppliers to pay

HALABJA, Iraq (AFP) -- An X-ray of Kamil Abdel Qader's lungs show a lower third that is entirely scarred -- lasting damage from the poisonous gas that rained down on his Iraqi Kurdish town of Halabja in 1988.

Doctors say he needs to get a fist-size chunk of tissue removed from his damaged lungs if he is going to survive, but he still considers himself the lucky one.

The rest of his family of eight died as they fled the gas, some dropping before his very eyes as they tried to flee into the hills.

Abdel Qader wants payback -- for his dead family, his shattered lungs and most of all for battered survivors of an attack that claimed 5,000 lives and destroyed a town.

The Halabja Chemical Victims' Society, Abdel Qader's small non-profit organization, wants the companies and governments which helped Saddam Hussein amass his stockpiles to pay compensation.

The funds would go to the few hundred survivors of the attack that came in the waning days of the Iraq-Iran war that raged between 1980 and 1988.

Though Abdel Qader blames the attack on Saddam and the mastermind of a sweeping anti-Kurd campaign, Ali Hassan al-Majid, dubbed "Chemical Ali" for this attack and others, he said commercial enterprises from around the world shared responsibility for helping arm the regime.

"We are trying to find the companies that helped the Iraqi government get chemical weapons for Saddam. We are trying to tell the world what happened here," said an emaciated Abdel Qader as he sat cross-legged on a carpet in his home.

The names of specific firms which sold Iraq the equipment and expertise needed to assemble its chemical arsenal have never been released.

A UN special disarmament commission UNSCOM set up after the 1991 Persian Gulf War over Kuwait to investigate Saddam's weapons arsenals protected its sources in order to encourage disclosure.

It is believed that just as the U.S. government provided Saddam with intelligence and dual-use technology, such as helicopters, to combat Iran, a long list of Western firms made fortunes exporting chemicals and armaments to Washington's one-time ally.

Abdel Qader has suffered severe health problems for the past 18 years, including chronic bronchitis, severe pulmonary fibrosis and opacity of the left cornea -- conditions that doctors said affect a high number of Halabja residents.

Saddam is currently on trial on charges of ordering the killing of 148 Shiite villagers in the mid-1980s, after which he will face charges of genocide for the "Anfal" campaign against the Kurds in which an estimated 100,000 died.

Prosecutors are expected to press charges linked to Halabja in a separate case, but Abdel Qader and other Kurdish activists said the courts should also prosecute those who gave Saddam the tools of his trade.

"Those who are suffering need a lot of money to get treatment in Western hospitals. We want to see those who helped Saddam punished and our rights restored," said Abdel Qader, who needs costly medical treatment abroad.

Abdullah Mahmud, a Kurdish author who has spent most of the past two decades cataloguing the debris from Saddam's numerous campaigns against the Kurds, said the U.S., Britain, France, ex-West Germany, the former Soviet Union and a handful of other countries helped arm the former dictator. "At that time Saddam had a good economy because of Iraq's oil wealth and he could afford pretty much any weapons he wanted," Mahmud said. "The people deserve to be compensated, and these companies should be uncovered."

But Iraqi authorities have not made clear whether they plan to probe into issues that could potentially ruin the reputations of major international companies. Asked if he expected such information to come out of the Saddam trial, chief investigating judge Raed al-Juhi said: "I cannot answer this question at the time to protect the investigation ... Everybody involved in the crime will be brought to trial."

Doctors said they believed cases of lung disease, therapeutic abortions and cancers were off the charts in Halabja, though the studies have not been done to prove it.

And while infertility rates are high, those women who do manage to conceive are likely to be faced with an early termination of their pregnancy because of abnormalities in the spinal cords or oversized heads in fetuses.

"There are still chemicals in the ground and in the food. Nobody has done anything to try to clean up," said Dr Shnow Hussien, a gynecologist in Halabja Hospital.

Even those with no obvious problems linked to the chemical attack have been angered by the Kurdish regional government's lack of attention to local concerns.

On March 16, the anniversary of the chemical attack, a group of thousands of rampaging youths burned down the city's towering memorial to the victims, protesting, among other things, the authorities' use of the tragedy as a propaganda tool.

Visiting officials have used the occasion to make generous promises but have never followed through, said Habat Nawzad, a local journalist.

"Every year March 16 is like a supermarket that opens for one day but closes before you have time to carry anything out," Nawzad said.

Posted by bhola at 07:19 AM | Comments (0)

May 14, 2006

Dow admits massive dioxin pollution but says it isn't all that bad for you

JEREMIAH STETTLER, THE SAGINAW NEWS, MAY 13, 2006

DOW: NUMBERS DISTORT RISK

What state regulators tout as "science" seems more like science fiction, Dow Chemical Co. officials say.

The company has released data challenging the state Department of Community Health's claims that a person who lives and dines along the Tittabawassee River consumes up to 3,900 percent more dioxin than the average adult.

Dow officials say the numbers distort the risks residents face by living along the river -- a position they draw on state and federal data to defend.

"What they are presenting to people is a misrepresentation of the facts," said Dow spokesman John C. Musser. "It infers a lot greater risk than reality."

The state Department of Environmental Quality joined with state health and agriculture agencies this year to produce a brochure about reducing dioxin exposure at home.

Dioxin is a toxic byproduct of chlorine manufacturing and other industrial processes that scientists have linked to birth defects, weakened immune systems and some forms of cancer in laboratory animals. State officials have unearthed elevated dioxin levels on properties downstream of Dow's Midland complex.

What rankles Dow leaders is a brochure graphic that details how much dioxin a person might ingest by living along the Tittabawassee River and eating sport fish and wild game harvested from along its banks.

The brochure suggests that people who don't follow the fish advisories, don't reduce their exposure to dioxin and eat deer and turkey from the floodplain could suffer 1,000 to 3,900 percent more exposure to dioxin than the average adult.

"Our purpose here is not to destroy industry," said Linda Dykema, manager of the Department of Community Health's Toxicology and Response Section. "It is to protect public health. We want people to understand that if they eat the fish they are not supposed to eat and eat the wild game they are not supposed to eat, their exposure is going to be that much higher."

But Dow officials say the state isn't giving residents a glimpse of the "real world." In a detailed critique of the state's findings, the chemical giant suggested that the study is flawed. Here's why:

Not every property has dioxin levels of 1,000 parts per trillion -- a level that exceeds the state limit 10 fold. Yet health officials use that number in their data.

A Dow spokesman said a more realistic number is about half that. Using soil sampling data from a Department of Community Health probe into more than a dozen Tittabawassee River properties with presumably high dioxin levels, Dow officials found an average dioxin level of 533 parts per trillion.

State officials say they relied on the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry standard and counter that the exposure investigation is in no way represents dioxin level along the entire river.

People don't eat the same number of white bass, carp and catfish as they do walleye. Yet the state lumps them all together -- even though the first three carry much more dioxin -- to determine anglers' diets.

Dow officials point to the state Department of Natural Resource's annual fishing census, which shows that a mid-Michigan angler's diet is 85 percent walleye -- a fish that the state recently removed from its advisory.

Jim Baker, fisheries unit supervisor for the DNR in Bay City, said the survey does not reflect anglers' diets. The fish census runs from January to mid-March and from the end of April through May to assess the walleye population in the Tittabawassee River.

While the survey accounts for all fish taken by anglers during that time, it does not reflect the catfish, smallmouth bass and carp -- each having higher dioxin levels than walleye -- that are taken later in the summer.

People don't eat two meals of turkey with skin on and two meals of deer liver each year, Dow officials say. They may eat one meal of each, but a second is a bit far-fetched, they say.

State officials disagree. Yet both sides concede that the number of meals -- which have a considerable affect on the results -- really is a judgment call based more on speculation than science.

Dow's objections go on. Officials say the state didn't account for dioxin loss in cooking sport fish or meat, that people don't really eat 100 milligrams of contaminated soil a day 350 days a year, and that the state included an extra six meals in the diet of its highest dioxin consumer.

"I don't argue their math," Musser said. "I argue their assumptions."

State officials stand behind the data as representative of what is happening in the floodplain. They acknowledge the extra six meals a day, but say it has little substantive impact on the results.

The state's report concludes that people who disregard the fish advisories, eat contaminated wildlife and do little or nothing to avoid the contamination will ingest up to five times more dioxin per month than the World Health Organization recommends.

Dow's levels are considerably lower. The levels range from about half the WHO allowance to a maximum concentration about 67 percent higher than the standard.

Even with Dow's numbers, Dykema said the data show that people who do nothing to limit their dioxin intake will suffer higher exposure than the average adult.

"If Dow has different numbers, so be it," she said. " We used numbers that we thought would paint a real world scenario so people could make an informed decision."

Jeremiah Stettler is a staff writer for The Saginaw News. You may reach him at 776-9685.

Posted by bhola at 09:07 AM | Comments (0)

May 13, 2006

Three decades later, Agent Orange still ravages Vietnam: "We must take responsibility", say vets

TIM WHEELER, PEOPLE'S WEEKLY WORLD, MAY 11, 2006

Photo by Daniel Shea of VFP72: children of Friendship Village in Hanoi greet conference delegates.

An unprecedented meeting in Hanoi, Vietnam, March 28-29, proved that wounds from the Vietnam War are still open and bleeding three decades after that conflict supposedly ended. It was the first International Conference of Victims of Agent Orange, and it attracted people from more than a dozen countries who are suffering the aftereffects of their exposure to Agent Orange, dioxin, and other toxic agents sprayed recklessly on Vietnam during the 10-year war.

The conference was sponsored by the Vietnam Association of Victims of Agent Orange (VAVAO).

David Cline, president of Veterans for Peace (VFP), led a delegation of five U.S. Vietnam veterans, including several who have suffered cancer and other dioxin-related illnesses or birth defects in their offspring which they blame on their exposure to Agent Orange. Cline told the World he is not an Agent Orange victim, but has struggled to recover from three wounds he sustained as a combat infantryman in Vietnam for which he received three Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star.

Still a burning issue

U.S. vet Ralph Steele talks to young boy at physical therapy session. Photo by Daniel Shea

“This conference showed us that Agent Orange is not just a ‘blast from the past,’” Cline said in a phone interview. “A huge number of children in Vietnam are suffering birth defects and deformities from their parents’ exposure to Agent Orange and other chemical agents. The Vietnamese are asking: ‘How many generations will be facing these birth defects?’”

Cline denounced successive administrations in Washington for arrogantly rejecting any responsibility for this catastrophe inflicted on the Vietnamese people. When the U.S. and Vietnam established diplomatic relations, he said, “the promises made in the Paris Peace Agreement of extensive postwar aid were nullified. There would be no more legal claims against each other. But the people in Vietnam are still suffering. We want relief for all veterans, all victims of Agent Orange. There is a certain level of responsibility that our nation owes that nation.”

In his speech to the conference, Cline said the premature death from cancer of fellow Vietnam vets first alerted him that they had been exposed to some deadly toxins in Vietnam.

U.S. companies, gov’t liable

“While the chemical companies had responsibility and should be held liable, the primary responsibility lies with the U.S. government which ordered the continued use of these poisons” after they were known to be toxic, he told the conference. “Our demand has always been testing, treatment and compensation for Agent Orange victims” by the U.S. government.

Progress was made with passage of the Agent Orange Act in 1991 admitting that these chemicals cause a long list of diseases, he continued.

“Today the Bush administration has led our country and the world into another invasion and occupation, this time in Iraq, and is now using depleted uranium that will in time poison U.S. troops and Iraqi citizens,” Cline said. “They have also used white phosphorus bombs against whole cities like Fallujah. It is time for humanity to demand an end to these weapons as part of our efforts to abolish war.”

Terrible deformities

U.S. vets join in song at Ho Chi Minh City hospital for victims of Agent Orange. Photo by Daniel Shea

Both at the conference itself and in a tour of Vietnam after the conference, the U.S. delegation witnessed firsthand the vast human tragedy, meeting deformed children struggling to develop and live a normal life.

For Cline, it was a “homecoming,” in that the tour took them to Cu Chi, a town near Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) where he was deployed during the war and where thousands of children now are suffering from exposure to Agent Orange.

“Sometimes I thought to myself it would be merciful if they were to die because the deformities are so disabling,” he said. “But they have a whole movement going to help these children and their families live as close to a normal life as possible”

Lawsuits, petitions

VAVOA is waging a struggle both inside Vietnam and internationally to obtain the resources needed to carry on this fight, including a lawsuit filed in the United States against the chemical companies that produced Agent Orange and dioxin.

VFP has fully backed VAVOA, sponsoring a 10-city tour of the U.S. last fall in which Vietnamese Agent Orange victims spoke to many thousands about their struggle. VFP’s web site features a VAVOA petition addressed to the president of the United States demanding that both he and the chemical corporations named in the lawsuit, including Dow Chemical and Monsanto, “accept their responsibilities for the damage caused by their actions and products” and “pay full compensation to the victims.”

So far nearly 700,000 people in the U.S. have signed the petition and more than 12 million Vietnamese have signed.

Reaching across generations

Another delegate to the Hanoi conference was Joan Duffy, who served as a U.S. Air Force nurse in Vietnam during the years 1969-70.

“I turned against the war while I was serving there,” she told the World in a phone interview from her home in Santa Fe, N.M. “Three months after I arrived, I looked around and asked myself, ‘What are we doing here?’ They [U.S. personnel] sprayed the perimeter of the base where I was deployed with dioxin twice a week to ward off infiltrators.”

In recent years Duffy has fought breast and ovarian cancer and her grandson was born with a bowel disorder that nearly took his life, a condition known to be linked to dioxin exposure.

“The legal presumption is that if you were anywhere in Vietnam, you were exposed to dioxin,” she said. “It has a half-life of between 50 and 100 years, and it is estimated that 3 million Vietnamese, mostly children, are ‘profoundly affected’ by exposure to these toxins.”

Cold shoulder from judge

Judge Jack Weinstein threw the VAVOA lawsuit out, rejecting their argument that Agent Orange was a weapon subject to the Geneva Conventions and their use against civilians was a war crime. Weinstein held that Agent Orange did not target people in Vietnam but was instead a “defoliant” aimed at Vietnam’s jungle.

“My rebuttal to that is that it wasn’t used simply to defoliate,” Duffy said. “It was a weapon to destroy food supplies. I don’t care what the intent was, the result is that it turned out to be a weapon. It violated so many international laws. With weapons, you try to limit their effect to combatants. But Agent Orange and dioxin affected millions of noncombatants during the war and continues to affect them today. This is a war crime.

“Agent Orange and dioxin are weapons of mass destruction,” she said. “What would you call a weapon used to starve people? If it quacks like a duck and waddles like a duck, it’s a damn duck!”

Duffy said she was deeply impressed by the superb organization of the conference held at the Ministry of Defense in Vietnam’s capital and by the stature of the participants, who included Vietnamese and international scientific experts on toxic chemical agents, a member of Parliament from New Zealand and top legal and medical experts in the field. It was covered extensively by the world media, although virtually ignored by the U.S. news media.

‘We must take responsibility’

Doctors charge third generation of birth defects in Vietnamese children caused by Agent Orange and dioxin spraying. Photo by Daniel Shea

During the conference they traveled to Friendship Village, built by the late George Mizo, a Vietnam veteran, to shelter hundreds of child victims of Agent Orange and dioxin.

“To see these children in person changes your life forever,” Duffy said. “They are so afflicted by such bizarre mutations. Yet the Vietnamese are doing a very good job of educating those who can be educated and stimulating children who are profoundly retarded.”

The experience, she said, strengthened her resolve to take action when she returned home. “Let’s hope we can make a difference in this year’s elections. Without a change in our nation’s political direction, I fear we are lost. Bush’s poll ratings go down, down. I just hope all those people who are angry and disillusioned get out and vote.”

Another delegate to the Hanoi conference was Dan Shea of Portland, Ore. He believes that his exposure to Agent Orange during his tour of duty in Vietnam cost him his son’s life.

“I tried to put the Vietnam War on the back shelf when I returned home, but my first child was born with a severe congenital heart defect,” Shea told the World. When his son reached age 3, heart surgery was performed. One day in 1981, he went into convulsions and fell into a coma.

“He died in my arms,” Shea said. “The war has a way of coming back to bite you. I never applied for any VA benefits. I didn’t want to have anything to do with them. I decided to devote the rest of my life to the search for peace and justice.”

Shea continued: “Going back to Vietnam was a healing process for me. I told the conference about the death of my child. People came up to me with tears in their eyes to say how sorry they were for my loss. And I was thinking about all the children they have lost. We need to take responsibility for what we did in Vietnam.”

Tim Wheeler (greenerpastures21212@yahoo.com) is national political correspondent for the People’s Weekly World.

Posted by bhola at 02:48 AM | Comments (0)

Juror says panel was bullied into Rocky Flats verdict

ASSOCIATED PRESS, MAy 12, 2006

Rocky Flats, Colorado, where a nuclear weapons facility operated by Dow has contaminated thousands of homes with plutonium

DENVER — The jury that awarded $553.9 million in a pollution case involving the former Rocky Flats nuclear weapons site was "bullied" into its decision by three of its members, according to a juror.

"I really feel there should be a mistrial or appeal," Juror Z. wrote, according to court documents in the case. "The more I think about this, the more I am sure the verdict is wrong."

The note from the unidentified juror was in an affidavit that was part of an effort to have Senior U.S. District Judge John Kane declare a mistrial. He rejected the request Wednesday, saying deliberations were ratified by defense lawyers and challenged only after the verdict.

The federal jury earlier this year decided Dow Chemical Co. and Rockwell International Corp. damaged land around the now-defunct plant through negligence that exposed thousands of property owners to plutonium and increased their risk of health problems.

Dow Chemical operated the Rocky Flats for the government from the 1950s until 1975; Rockwell ran it from 1975 until 1989, when it closed. The plant made plutonium triggers for nuclear warheads.

Yellow dot shows location of the nuclear plant, paler areas show the plutonium plume spreading north-east: the lightest areas are the most heavily contaminated

Jurors found in favor of the owners of 12,000 properties northwest of Denver. They concluded that property values declined because of plutonium contamination. They also awarded punitive damages against the companies that operated the site for the Energy Department.

According to court documents, another juror with pro-defense leanings left the jury after being unable to stand criticism from those who wanted to find in favor of the homeowners.

The companies and their lawyers have cited several grounds to appeal, including jury instructions they say were too liberal.

Posted by bhola at 02:31 AM | Comments (0)

Minamata at 50: the tragedy deepens

ERIC JOHNSTON, MAY 12, 2006

"The most dangerous enemy to truth and freedom amongst us is the compact majority.' Henrik Ibsen, "An Enemy of the People.'

As public spaces in Japan go, Minamata's Eco Park is quite pleasant. Unlike the "Designed by local elders and built by a yakuza-linked construction firm now under indictment' concrete monstrosities that often pass for "parks' in Japan, one can actually relax in Eco Park and enjoy a stroll along the waterfront of Minamata bay and the Shiranui Sea off Kyushu in western Japan.

Although it was not built in order to line the pockets of local politicians and businesses, Eco Park does have a purpose. Two, actually. The first is above ground, and located beside the bay. It's a small stone memorial that reads, "To all life forms of the Shiranui Sea that were victims. This tragedy shall not be repeated. Sleep in peace.' Scattered about the memorial are small clay figurines of shellfish. The second purpose is right beneath your feet. For buried underneath the bucolic park is 27 tons of mercury-tainted sludge from Minamata Bay that was dredged and used as landfill.

The clay figurines at the memorial serve as a poignant reminder that Minamata Disease, which was first officially reported on May 1st, 1956, has affected all life forms. This year marked the 50th anniversary of that report, and on May 1st, nearly 600 people, including dozens of Minamata victims and their families and friends, gathered to remember the over 900 people who died after ingesting mercury-tainted seafood, and the thousands who continue to suffer from numbness and paralysis. The ceremony was sponsored by Minamata City and the guest of honor was Environment Minister Koike Yuriko, whose agency has consistently fought against further compensation or efforts to certify all those who are suffering from the medically-accepted definition of Minamata Disease but cannot get the government to recognize their plight for political reasons. The city had originally wanted Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro to put in an appearance as well, but he said no.

Even the chairman of Chisso was present. For the past half-century, Japan's, and the world's, environmentalists have cursed the name of Chisso. This is the company that caused Minamata Disease by dumping organic mercury into the bay, and then denying responsibility when the first victims appeared. This is the company that twisted the arms of the first impoverished victims back in 1959, forcing them to sign an agreement saying they would not sue Chisso even if in the future the company was found to be the cause. In return, they got payments of between 30,000 and 300,000 yen, minuscule sums, yet more money than most had ever seen.

As evidence mounted that the company was, indeed, responsible, Chisso organized a massive public disinformation campaign designed to isolate the victims as greedy rabble-rousers ignorant of science and the doctors who supported them as amateurs or anti-capitalist communist dupes. Corrupt scientists at leading universities, often in Chisso's pocket, were enlisted in the attempt. One tenured stooge in Tokyo trumpeted his "scientific research' that showed the waters of Minamata bay did not have particularly high mercury levels and, therefore, Chisso could not be the cause of the disease. In fact, as it was quickly pointed out, the scientist purposely avoided taking samples from the seabed, where mercury concentrations were highest. Nor was the propaganda campaign limited to academia. Corporate titans allied with Chisso spun fantastic lies about why the victims were sick, making up stories about old chemical weapons having been dumped into Minamata bay after World War II and now leaking toxins.

Finally, when all attempts at propaganda failed, and the world woke up to the horrors of Minamata from the photographs of noted LIFE magazine photographer Eugene Smith, it was Chisso-hired yakuza thugs who beat up Smith, giving him injuries that affected his eyesight and forcing an end to a brilliant career.

Chisso would not be found guilty for its years of negligence until 1973, four years after a group of victims in Kumamoto Prefecture took the company to court. In 1979, the Supreme Court would, separately, find top Chisso executives guilty of negligent homicide.

By then, the Environment Ministry was faced with thousands of applications from those seeking certification as Minamata Disease victims. (It was indeed strange, even by the Byzantine standards of the Japanese bureaucracy, that the Environment Ministry, not the Health and Welfare Ministry decided what was unquestionably a health and welfare issue). The ministry, fearing the financial implications of having to approve unknown numbers of victims, decided in 1977 to adopt stricter certification standards, effectively denying tens of thousands of sufferers the right to compensation. The decision was condemned by medical experts in Japan and abroad as completely lacking in scientific or medical reasoning.

It also launched another round of lawsuits throughout the 1980s from those suffering from the disease but not officially recognized as such. Finally, when Socialist Prime Minister Murayama Tomiichi came to power in 1994, he declared one of his goals was a final settlement in the Minamata Disease saga. In late December 1995, with the LDP and Environment Ministry no longer opposed to central government compensation if it meant an end to the lawsuits, the Murayama Cabinet awarded 2.6 million each to the uncertified victims on condition that they could show a loss of sensation in all four limbs and would agree to withdraw their lawsuits and not seek further legal action.

Although Murayama apologized to the victims, that did not constitute formal, legal responsibility on the part the government for its complacency in failing to stop the dumping of the mercury. Nevertheless, more than 10,000 victims nationwide, aging and tired of the long court battles, accepted the compensation package. But one small group of victims in the Kansai region refused and fought on to establish the central government's culpability. It would take a nearly a decade, but, in 2004, the Japanese Supreme Court ruled the national government and Kumamoto Prefecture were jointly liable for the cause and spread of Minamata Disease.

"The Supreme Court decision upheld the Osaka High Court ruling of 2001. That ruling said both the national and Kumamoto prefectural governments had responsibility for the cause and spread of Minamata Disease from 1960 onwards, damage that could have been prevented if the government authorities had taken appropriate measures,' said Dr. Ekino Shigeo, a professor of medicine at Kumamoto University, whose testimony on behalf of the Kansai plaintiffs played a key role in both the High Court verdict and Supreme Court decision.

What the decision meant was that, because the government was responsible for what happened from 1960 onwards, it was also responsible for those who developed Minamata Disease after 1960 but were not officially certified. Just as important, the Supreme Court decision also laid down new criteria for who was, officially, a Minamata Disease victim. Such requirements were less strict than the 1977 guidelines the Environment Ministry was still using.

Sadly, if those plaintiffs seeking certification thought the Supreme Court decision would end their waiting, they were wrong. Environment Minister Koike did little more than appoint a panel to study the issue. Then, essentially ignoring the Supreme Court, she said, in effect, that her ministry would stick to the 1977 guidelines. Pressure continued, though, and, finally, just before Golden Week this year, media reports indicated the government would address the Supreme Court ruling by providing a medical allowance of around 20,000 yen a month to people who are not certified as disease victims, but show 'mild symptoms'. (1) But anger over the government's refusal to honor the letter of the Supreme Court decision continues to simmer, and many of the victims are wondering what the next step might be. One possibility might be to appeal to the United Nations to investigate whether the Minamata victims have had their basic human rights, as recognized in U.N. treaties that Japan has signed and ratified, violated by the Japanese government.

At present, nobody knows the true number of Minamata Disease sufferers. Medical experts believe there may be up to 30,000 people who have been affected by the poisoning. So far, though, only about 2,300 people have been certified as having Minamata Disease, while another 10,000 have applied but been rejected. Life for the victims has been a long nightmare of physical suffering and, in the beginning at least, social ostracism. Speaking from his wheelchair at the May 1st ceremony, Hamamoto Tsuginori, head of the Minamata Disease Victims Association, tearfully recalled being bullied and threatened back in the 1950s and 1960s when he attempted to bring Chisso to justice.

Like Dr. Thomas Stockmann in Ibsen's "An Enemy of the People', a play which the young doctors who cared for the earliest Minamata patients took to heart, Hamamoto and the victims, as well as all who helped them, were branded traitors and troublemakers by not only Chisso but also angry relatives, friends and neighbors in the small town, all of whom relied on Chisso for their livelihood. People crossed the street if they saw a Minamata victim or the relative of a victim coming their way. Shopkeepers refused them service. Officials, ranging from lowly ward office officials all the way up to the Environment Ministry suggested, sometimes directly, sometimes obliquely, that the victims themselves bore responsibility for their plight.

Today, within Minamata itself, much of the social stigma surrounding Minamata Disease patients has been replaced by understanding and sympathy for their plight, although some locals claim it's not uncommon for those seeking to get married to check up on the prospective bride or groom's background to ensure there are no Minamata Disease patients.

And many of the elderly Minamata Disease patients who fled the town in shame and fear decades ago kept, and continue to keep, a low profile. For years, Sakamoto Miyoko, a Minamata Disease victim who lives in Osaka, did not tell people she was originally from Minamata.

"I would always say I was from Kyushu or Kumamoto, but never Minamata. It was not until the early 1970s, at which point I'd been living in Osaka for some time, that my friends learned I was from Minamata. This was because of my involvement in the court case against Chisso and the fact that my picture appeared in the newspapers. I had to explain to people what the disease was and assure them it was not contagious,' she said.

If there has been any good news to the tragedy of Minamata, it is that the struggles of the victims gave rise to an aggressive, nationwide citizens' environmental movement in the 1960s and early 1970s that led to some much needed environmental laws -- indeed, to the creation of the Environmental Agency itself. And the momentum from that time continues. Many of today's activists trying to halt the country's nuclear power industry or warning about the dangers of asbestos are veterans of, or have a great interest in, the battles fought by the Minamata victims.

Even Minamata officials recognize a connection between their tragedy and nuclear power. At the May 1st ceremonies, among those invited to place flowers at the memorial and offer their prayers were local government officials from Tokaimura, where the country's worst nuclear power accident occurred in 1999.

As ceremonies of this type go, the May 1st event for the Minamata victims had a quiet dignity that was noticeably absent from the tacky, theatrical, forced atmosphere and contrived, maudlin emotions and platitudes one too often sees and hears at the official Hiroshima ceremony each August 6th, or the annual memorial service Hyogo Prefecture holds on January 17th to remember victims of the Great Hanshin Earthquake. This is, perhaps, due to the fact that the Minamata tragedy is very much ongoing and very much the story of citizens fighting the powers-that-be. The victims, even a half century later, remain visible, and very vocal, deterrents to ever more extravagant productions and, more importantly, historical revisionists in the government and industry who would use such productions in order to rewrite the Minamata story to suit their own ends and silence the truth about what really happened and why.

But for how much longer? Each year, the Minamata victims get older and a few more pass away. In the past, attempts like the one the Ministry of Education made back in 1981 to expunge the name "Chisso' from a high school textbook chapter on Minamata Disease could be easily blocked. Back then, there were enough people who understood the horrors, and the truth, of Minamata to defeat what Ibsen called the "compact majority' of dishonest public officials and business leaders, and the apathetic, or indifferent members of the media and the public who follow them blindly.

But this year, with virtually no opposition or media discussion, both Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro and Environment Minister Koike Yuriko, dismissed by political pundits as "Koizumi's geisha', relied on the pro forma government explanation for Minamata, the one used in official Japan when all other lies and excuses have failed: shikata ga nai (it couldn't be helped). Minamata Disease, both Koizumi and Koike said, occurred at a time when Japan was rapidly recovering from the war and national policy emphasized industrial output above all else. Therefore, they would have us conclude, all subsequent problems were because the government was "unable' to respond as effectively as it should have. Shikata ga nai, and now we know better. Let's forget the past and move forward, because arguing over the reasons why Minamata Disease occurred (as if there were some "argument' over the causes of Minamata to begin with) isn't going to bring back the dead.

Such rhetoric forms the basis of a strategy that has often served Japan's historical revisionists in government, industry, the media, and the public at large quite well, whether the history they are rewriting is that of a small town that was once poisoned by mercury, or of an entire nation that was once poisoned by military propaganda.

(1) "New Allowance Planned for Minamata Victims,' The Daily Yomiuri, April 9th, 2006.

Eric Johnston is Deputy Editor for The Japan Times' Osaka bureau, and covered the ceremony at Minamata on May 1st. The opinions contained within this article are entirely his own, and not those of The Japan Times. Eric can be reached at japantimes-osa@sannet.ne.jp. This article was written for Japan Focus.

Posted by bhola at 02:06 AM | Comments (0)

May 11, 2006

An award-winning book tells stories of Chernobyl

THE PLAIN DEALER, WEDNESDAY MAY 10, 2006

Donna Marchetti

It has been 20 years since the nuclear reactor at Chernobyl blew apart, spewing radiation that caused 100,000 people to flee their homes in Ukraine and Belarus. The accident has triggered a rise in cancer, neurological disorders and genetic mutations every year since.

In Voices From Chernobyl (Picador, $14, 236pp; translated by Keith Gessen), Ukrainian journalist Svetlana Alexievich collects the stories of those affected and lets them speak for themselves.

There's newlywed Lyudmilla Ignatenko, who nursed her firefighter husband through radiation sickness until he was so ill that pieces of his skin broke away and stuck to her fingers. Two months after he died, Lyudmilla gave birth to their daughter. Four hours later, the infant was dead from multiple complications of radiation poisoning.

There's the soldier, just back from Afghanistan in 1986, sent to Chernobyl as part of a minimally protected cleanup crew. Over the years, he has witnessed friends and fellow workers sicken and die horribly.

"I don't know how I'm going to die," he says. "I do know this: You don't last long with my diagnosis. . . . I was in Afghanistan, too. It was easier there. They just shot you."

This haunting, powerful book won the 2005 National Book Critics Circle Award for general nonfiction.

Posted by bhola at 12:05 PM | Comments (0)

Commentary: A tour of Chernobyl, 20 years after

By Trish Williams-Mello
May 10, 2006

Climbing into an ancient relic of a bus in front of the hotel in Kiev, Ukraine, I somewhat hesitantly began my trip to the 30 kilometer exclusion zone surrounding the ruins of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

Along with many of my colleagues, there last month for the anniversary of the world's worst nuclear power plant accident, I felt as if we were traveling through a time warp back to the early 1980s, back to the Cold War, prior to glasnost and perestroika and everything since.

Two hours north of Kiev we arrived at the security gate on the border of the exclusion zone. We began our tour with a briefing at the Chernobylinterinform, a public relations office, after which we continued on into the exclusion zone.

We were able to leave the bus and walk around in only a few areas within the zone, after being strictly warned not to walk on or touch any of the vegetation.

Walking around Pripyat, once an elegant and rather elaborate city built to house Chernobyl's workers and now a ruin, the only sound that broke the silence was the interminable clicking of my colleagues' radiation monitors.

It was as though a death-shroud was still spread over the entire region - suffocating what sparse life was left. Where were the wild horses and other wildlife I was told to expect? I could count on one hand the living beings that I saw there - a bird, a bug and one very strange looking dog.

Today there are only 338 of the original 200,000 residents living within the exclusion zone, these few having returned illegally in spite of the contamination. They do not want to leave their homeland despite the unseen dangers of the radiation.

The accident, caused by human errors and poor design, climaxed when an explosion ripped through the Number 4 reactor at Chernobyl at 1:23 a.m. on April 26, 1986. It left its mark on the entire world, most severely on Ukraine and its neighbors Belarus and Russia but also on other European countries, which received more than half of the contaminants released.

Radioactive gases, fuel and debris from the reactor were also hurled into the atmosphere. Over 1,800 tons of carbon within the reactor ignited and burned for nearly 10 days. It has been difficult to determine the actual amounts of contaminants released and number of persons affected because of the secrecy, falsified medical data and inaccurate records.

As I traveled through the region, I became aware that the veil of secrecy surrounding the accident and its aftermath has only partially been lifted, even after twenty years. During the three-day conference that I attended in Kiev later that week there were many discussions about the struggle for truth concerning the Chernobyl disaster. The full human cost is just beginning to be understood.

There have been numerous reports released about Chernobyl with greatly differing predictions of morbidity and mortality. Two recent studies, one commissioned by the European Parliament and one by Greenpeace International, estimate excess cancer deaths as 30,000 to 60,000 and somewhat greater than 90,000, respectively. In contrast, the International Atomic Energy Agency, known to be a supporter of nuclear energy, reports only 4,000.

It is honestly very hard for anyone to put this much devastation and contamination into context unless you have seen it. Standing outside the fence in front of the sarcophagus over the damaged reactor, one imagines a tornado or hurricane having struck this facility, carrying its deadly nuclear guts up into the atmosphere to ride the clouds as an angel of death, spreading deadly hands of disease and deformity over a vast area.

It reminded me of a biblical plague, one that will continue to kill, deform, devastate and contaminate for many generations to come - the people first, but also their homeland.

People making decisions about nuclear power must think how their decisions today could affect the world many generations into the future - as did the American Indians. One mistake, one human error, and all future generations will suffer. Think about it.

Williams-Mello is operations director for the Los Alamos Study Group, a nuclear weapons watchdog group located in Albuquerque.

Posted by bhola at 12:04 PM | Comments (0)

May 10, 2006

Advanced welfare should arise from Minamata

TAKETO KATO, WRITING IN THE ASAHI SHIMBUN, MAY 10, 2006

The innocent Shiranui Sea sits out there shimmering in the warm spring sunshine. The briny waters and the sea bed are filled with life and procreation. On the shore, new leaves are shooting from the trees, while wild flowers carpet the ground. The way this land welcomes the new season with such beauty and abundance never fails to impress me.

May 1 marked the 50th anniversary of official recognition of the disease later known as Minamata disease--the sometimes fatal neurological disorder caused by mercury poisoning. Half a century later, there are still many issues that lie unsolved.

Looking back on the history of the disease, finding congenital Minamata disease patients was an alarming discovery that had the potential to virtually overturn the history of humanity.

Prior to Minamata disease, it was widely believed that poisons were not passed through the mother's placenta; the placenta played the role of a barrier effectively protecting the womb and the fetus within. Thus the very existence of fetal-type Minamata disease patients who were poisoned in utero became a warning message for the future of humanity, a threat to humanity's very existence. Yet, the whole picture as to the devastation of the disease has not been clarified.

I opened a vocational training center "Hottohausu" in Minamata, Kumamoto Prefecture, eight years ago. Here I can be with fetal-type Minamata disease patients and work side by side with them. I have been listening to the needs of the Minamata disease patients, trying to find what kind of support measures and medical and nursing care they really want.

To that end I have been conducting interviews with patients to come up with a realistic picture of the status quo, and to present a regional welfare model that will fill in the gaps that remain unprovided for by conventional welfare measures.

Fetal-type Minamata disease patients are now in their forties to fifties. Compared to healthy people, their bodily functions are diminishing at an alarming speed, almost unthinkable in a regular aging process. In many patient families, the fathers have already died. The mothers are mostly over 70 years old. Support measures for patients who will soon be left without their care-giving parents have to be set up immediately.

After completing nine years of compulsory education, many Minamata disease patients were left in limbo. There was no support system that would allow them to interact with society. Victims struck down by disorders affecting the whole body, were left to the care of their aging family members, tied to their own homes, in semi-isolation within their local community.

The families are tired from the constant care. They are surely at the end of their tether.

It is not that there are no welfare facilities in the community. However, consider a backdrop wrought with prejudice and discrimination, making it extremely difficult to sustain a relationship built on trust. And if Minamata disease families feel they cannot rely upon and work with such specialist facilities, that is proof of how deep and convoluted the Minamata disease problem is.

My interviews were conducted under extremely trying circumstances. Many patients were reluctant to even reveal that they were afflicted with Minamata disease. After 50 years, there are still parents who have never told their children that they are patients.

Revitalization measures for regions that were polluted by the mercury waste have been implemented to some extent. But authorities, central and local, have done little to promote social welfare of the victims.

The harsh reality that surrounds fetal-type Minamata disease patients 50 years from the official recognition is enough evidence of the glaring lack of support. Actually, it is an issue that can be shared for all people with disabilities who live in the community. Basically the measures should aim at creating a system where patients can continue to live in their local neighborhood and stay connected to the people, supported by a network of patient-friendly community. The social requirements should fit well with a community welfare system.

Specifically, I propose creating a place where anyone can stop by for a visit, or stay the night, any time when there is the need. The place must have someone who can act as confidante, and talk with visitors at all times.

Group homes are good, too. They can serve as places for work and other creative activities; a place where patients can spend time with their friends and people from the local community, as well as a place for living. It is also necessary to dispatch nurses and helpers to individual homes, on a regular basis so they become friendly faces.

Family members worn out from ceaseless care need time to unwind. I hope to see many facilities, multi-functional but small, opening up in the community.

The government must take action now. It is time to make use of the knowledge garnered from the Minamata disease disaster and pour its efforts into putting together an advanced social welfare system that serves the region and serves as a model for other communities to follow.

Posted by bhola at 10:09 AM | Comments (0)

May 08, 2006

Plaquemine residents express fears over Dow benzene pipeline

STORY & PHOTO: MARK H. HUNTER, THE ADVOCATE, MAY 7,2006

Hazel Sparrow, left, a resident of Point Pleasant, listens to General Manager Scott Presley of Pipeline Technology explain on Saturday his company’s plans to construct a 23-mile benzene pipeline that will pass near the Ella Road and Point Pleasant communities. Presley holds a section of the pipe to illustrate its construction details.

PLAQUEMINE, LOUISIANA — The Iberville Parish president and a pipeline company executive on Saturday assured a group of rural residents that a proposed benzene pipeline would not endanger their health and safety.

Residents of the Ella Road and Point Pleasant communities invited Parish President Mitch Ourso Jr. and general manager Scott Presley of Pipeline Technology to meet with them at the residence of Vera and Charles Brooks just off La. 1 about 3 miles southeast of Plaquemine.

The pipeline, 8 inches in diameter, is proposed to run from the Dow Chemical Co. plant near Plaquemine across 23 miles of Iberville Parish, through the small community of Point Pleasant, under the Mississippi River to the TOTAL Petrochemicals USA Inc. plant near Carville, said Presley, general manager of Pipeline Technology, the line’s owner and operator.

The Baton Rouge company is negotiating rights of way and still requires some state and federal permits before the $17 million project goes under construction in 2007, Presley said.

Some of the nine residents who attended the meeting told Ourso and Presley they are worried because benzene is a hazardous chemical.

Benzene is used to produce styrene, Presley told the residents gathered in the Brooks’ living room, and is used in a range of products from foam coffee cups to plastic bodies of television sets and computers.

“Benzene is a carcinogen and long exposure to it is shown to cause cancer,” Presley said. “The greatest public exposure to benzene is gasoline. Some of the (odor) you smell is the benzene in the gas.”

Presley stressed the public will be protected by environmental precautions the company will take building the line.

Measures will include a high-pressure test before it goes online and computers that will constantly monitor pressure, temperature and flow rate. Six valves strategically placed along the line will shut it down in an emergency, he said.

Presley presented his plans to the Iberville Parish Council six weeks ago. Parish President Ourso told residents the parish government is satisfied with the pipeline project.

“I don’t oppose this,” Ourso said. “Right now they are transporting 125 barge loads of benzene on the (Mississippi) river and there is a large margin for error involving accidents, fog, ship (collisions) and human error loading and unloading it. Pipelines are proven to be the safest mode of transportation and I don’t think we’ll have any problems with it.”

Ourso added that much of the pipeline will be in a “pipeline alley,” a right of way which already carries four pipelines and an overhead electric transmission line.

“I don’t see any adverse effects,” Ourso said. “I think it will improve air quality and safety on the river by removing 10 to 12 barges a month.”

Vera Brooks, whose house is about a mile from the proposed pipeline and 50 yards from the river’s levee, said after the meeting her concerns were addressed by the officials.

“I have more understanding with how the pipeline is going and what they want to do,” she said. “That’s all we wanted — a good understanding. There was a time when people would come in here and just shove this stuff down our throats.”

Charles Brooks, her husband, agreed. “I think it will be safer underground than on barges on the river. As long as they keep their promises and as long as it’s not on my doorstep, it’s fine.”

Hazel Sparrow, who lives in nearby Point Pleasant, said she fears the pipeline will come down her road to the river.

“I’m not convinced,” Sparrow said. “I’m concerned about my seven grandchildren. We have enough chemicals around here now. I don’t feel like it is safe.”

Janice Dickerson of Brusly said she viewed the meeting as “an excellent beginning. All these companies need to do is come directly to the people and let them know it is safe. People around here were very concerned.”

The meeting wound down around noon and Presley said he, too. felt that the residents’ concerns were addressed.

“I’m grateful they invited me here and I think we knocked down some rumors that have no basis in fact,” Presley said. “I think most of the people here will leave feeling better about it.”

Posted by bhola at 07:20 AM | Comments (0)

May 07, 2006

As Halabja's 18th anniversary nears, a reminder of who helped Saddam Hussein acquire weapons of mass destruction

Donald Rumsfeld shakes hands with Saddam during his visit to Iraq on December 19-20, 1983. Declassified papers leave the White House hawk exposed over his role during the Iran-Iraq war.

He visited again on March 24, 1984, the day the UN released a report that mustard gas and the nerve gas Tabun had been used by Iraq against Iranian troops. On March 29, 1984, the New York Times reported that "American diplomats pronounce themselves satisfied with relations between Iraq and the United States and suggest that normal diplomatic ties have been restored in all but name.

On March 16, 1988, Saddam's air force bombed the Kurdish town of Halabla with cyanide and nerve gases, killing thousands, part of a series of attacks on Kurdish towns and villages. That same year, the Dow Chemical Company sold $1.5million worth (£930,000) of pesticides to Iraq despite suspicions they would be used for chemical warfare.

With the 18th anniversary of the Halabja massacre looming, it is worth re-reading this 2002 article from The Guardian in London.

RUMSFELD 'OFFERED HELP TO SADDAM'

Julian Borger writing in The Guardian, Tuesday December 31, 2002

The Reagan administration and its special Middle East envoy, Donald Rumsfeld, did little to stop Iraq developing weapons of mass destruction in the 1980s, even though they knew Saddam Hussein was using chemical weapons "almost daily" against Iran, it was reported yesterday.

US support for Baghdad during the Iran-Iraq war as a bulwark against Shi'ite militancy has been well known for some time, but using declassified government documents, the Washington Post provided new details yesterday about Mr Rumsfeld's role, and about the extent of the Reagan administration's knowledge of the use of chemical weapons.

The details will embarrass Mr Rumsfeld, who as defence secretary in the Bush administration is one of the leading hawks on Iraq, frequently denouncing it for its past use of such weapons.

The US provided less conventional military equipment than British or German companies but it did allow the export of biological agents, including anthrax; vital ingredients for chemical weapons; and cluster bombs sold by a CIA front organisation in Chile, the report says.

Intelligence on Iranian troop movements was provided, despite detailed knowledge of Iraq's use of nerve gas.

Rick Francona, an ex-army intelligence lieutenant-colonel who served in the US embassy in Baghdad in 1987 and 1988, told the Guardian: "We believed the Iraqis were using mustard gas all through the war, but that was not as sinister as nerve gas.

"They started using Tabun [a nerve gas] as early as '83 or '84, but in a very limited way. They were probably figuring out how to use it. And in '88, they developed Sarin."

On November 1 1983, the secretary of state, George Shultz, was passed intelligence reports of "almost daily use of CW [chemical weapons]" by Iraq.

However, 25 days later, Ronald Reagan signed a secret order instructing the administration to do "whatever was necessary and legal" to prevent Iraq losing the war.

In December Mr Rumsfeld, hired by President Reagan to serve as a Middle East troubleshooter, met Saddam Hussein in Baghdad and passed on the US willingness to help his regime and restore full diplomatic relations.

Mr Rumsfeld has said that he "cautioned" the Iraqi leader against using banned weapons. But there was no mention of such a warning in state department notes of the meeting.

Howard Teicher, an Iraq specialist in the Reagan White House, testified in a 1995 affidavit that the then CIA director, William Casey, used a Chilean firm, Cardoen, to send cluster bombs to use against Iran's "human wave" attacks.

A 1994 congressional inquiry also found that dozens of biological agents, including various strains of anthrax, had been shipped to Iraq by US companies, under licence from the commerce department.

Furthermore, in 1988, the Dow Chemical company sold $1.5m-worth (£930,000) of pesticides to Iraq despite suspicions they would be used for chemical warfare.

The only occasion that Iraq's use of banned weapons seems to have worried the Reagan administration came in 1988, after Lt Col Francona toured the battlefield on the al-Faw peninsula in southern Iraq and reported signs of sarin gas.

"When I was walking around I saw atropine injectors lying around. We saw decontamination fluid on vehicles, there were no insects," said Mr Francona, who has written a book on shifting US policy to Iraq titled Ally to Adversary. "There was a very quick response from Washington saying, 'Let's stop our cooperation' but it didn't last long - just weeks."

Posted by bhola at 02:10 PM | Comments (0)

May 06, 2006

Dow-funded study finds food downstream more toxic for Tittabawassee songbirds but makes light of it

Mónica Guzmán, Midland Daily News

It might look like the same trees and shrubs from a bird’s-eye view, but whether an eastern bluebird, tree swallow or house wren builds its nest upstream or downstream of The Dow Chemical Co. could mean the difference between everyday flies and earthworms and slightly more contaminated grub.

[Ed: 339 times more contaminated, see below! The Midland Daily News is Dow's home town newspaper. For facts, visit http://www.trwnews.net/]

That’s the preliminary finding of a Dow-funded study on common songbirds living on the Tittabawassee River watershed.

The project, one of a group of contamination studies conducted by doctoral students at Michigan State University, is about one-third complete, said its lead researcher, Timothy B. Fredericks.

But there are still plenty of measurements left to take – including tissue and behavioral data – before anything can be said about what the difference in diet means for the birds.

"They are still here, so take that as you will," said Fredericks, who presented his findings to the public at the Chippewa Nature Center Thursday. "It’s preliminary, but I’m going to say they’re OK."

His was the last installment of a four-part weekly series at the nature center about chemical contamination and local wildlife.

Upstream of Dow, all is tickety-boo for the Eastern Bluebird	As for its downstream cousin? Stop! Spit that out at once!

Songbirds living downstream from the Dow Chemical plant ate insects and worms with up to 55 times more toxins than birds nesting upstream, the study found.

Ninety percent of the toxins are difurans, a compound related to dioxins, Fredericks said.

Sneaking a peek at the birds’ meals was not easy. First, the researchers had to carefully extract food from wide-mouthed nestlings after mom or dad delivered the feast. Then, they had to sort out the menu of spiders, mayflies, moths and earthworms – in various stages of digestion – from more than 1,000 collected samples, and tally each item’s predetermined toxicity.

"You learn your bugs, that’s for sure," Fredericks joked.

Earthworms living downstream picked up the most of the soil and sediment-bound toxins of all the critters in the birds’ diet. The worms – bluebirds’ favorite snack – showed 339 times more contaminants than those further upstream.

Earthworms collected upstream of Dow were taken as a control sample to compare toxic loads		Downstream of Dow earthworms contained 339 times more toxins, including dioxins and furans

Flies were 32 times more toxic downstream, and downstream moths – the house wren’s preferred prey – had 20 times more contaminants.

Still, the actual toxic content is at most a few hundred parts per billion, he said, and to what extent the birds are what they eat is a question that warrants more research.

"It will be interesting to see if the tissue concentrations match up with the dietary concentrations," Fredericks said.

Testing the birds’ bodies for the presence of toxins and looking for any changes in nesting and growth are the next steps in what might be a three- or four-year project.

A similar Michigan State study presented last week found that owls are exposed to 100 times more contamination when they feed downstream of the company as when they feed upstream.

Wise old owls stay well upstream of Dow Chemical	Owls downstream of Dow eat 10,000% more toxins

On Thursday, Fredericks said he had no expectations coming into the study, which kept him in the field as much as 18 hours a day while he gathered data between April and August last year, tagging nearly 900 birds for future observation in the process.

"I’ve always been attracted to birds, because they’re everywhere," said Fredericks, who is preparing for another summer of intense research. "No matter where you go, anywhere you go, you see a bird."

Posted by bhola at 07:04 AM | Comments (0)

Halabjans wonder where aid to Iraq has gone

May 5, 2006

"They say that corrupt officials have siphoned most of the money."

Before it became a symbol of Saddam Hussein's persecution of the Kurds, Halabja was one of the most prosperous communities in Iraq.

Pomegranates, grains, grapes, tobacco and nuts grew in Halabja's fertile soil. Local factories employed those not working in the town's thriving agricultural sector.

Today, 18 years after the Iraqi military launched chemical attacks on this mountainous city near the Iranian border, the community's economy remains in ruins.

The agriculture industry, which once employed about 90 percent of local residents, never recovered from the 1988 attacks and the United Nations-imposed sanctions in the 1990s. Local products now struggle to compete with lower-priced imports.

Many in the city of about 80,000 in Sulaimaniyah province say they have been waiting since 1991, when the Kurds took administrative control of the northeastern Iraq, for some help.

They certainly expected something to happen after Saddam was overthrown in 2003.

Instead, residents in Halabja, especially those who survived Saddam's chemical-weapons attack, say they still cannot receive treatment for the variety of ailments caused by the attack, including cancer and respiratory illnesses. They note that many of the roads in the city remain unpaved and that most of the buildings destroyed during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s still lie in rubble.

In March, demonstrators staged a protest during ceremonies marking the anniversary of Saddam's chemical attack.

Security forces opened fired on the demonstrators, killing a teenage boy.

Soon after the protest, the Kurd-ish government pledged $30 million for projects in Halabja. Officials promised that basic services such as water, roads and health care would be provided.

But a conference scheduled for last month on the rehabilitation projects had to be indefinitely postponed after Kurdish authorities revealed they could not come up with the financing for the projects.

All of this has left locals in Halabja wondering what happened to the millions of dollars in aid that have poured into the region since 2003.

Even the town's former mayor, Jameel Abdulrahman, said he has no idea how much the central Kurdish government has spent in his community. He does know that his request for economic development funds, to open some of the shuttered factories in the city, have gone unheeded.

According to officials with the central Kurdish government, $105 million has been spent on recovery efforts in the region over the last three years. But most local observers say there is little to show for it. They say that corrupt officials have siphoned most of the money.

For example, Abdulrahman said, after pouring the foundations for three new government buildings in Halabja last year, all construction came to a halt because of lack of funds.

Meanwhile, unemployment is rampant. There are few private-sector jobs in the region and those who can get jobs in the government sector, usually the police force, have relied on family connections for their posts.

"The economic situation is terrible in Halabja," said Yaseen Najim, 27, an unemployed resident who has tried several times to find work. "There is no company or factory we can work in."

At the same time, farmers have abandoned their fields, saying they cannot compete with cheaper fruits and vegetables coming from Iran and Syria.

"It's a shame that we're importing products when we have such fertile land," said Arsalan Manucher, an economics professor at the University of Sulaimaniyah.

"It's not just Halabja," said Ibrahim Khidr Ahmad, head of planning for the government's agriculture ministry. "The situation for farmers and farming isn't good in all of the areas (of Iraq). The country was destroyed."

Ahmad said ministry officials recently visited Halabja to discuss assistance for the area and have pledged $6 million for irrigation projects. He also said the Baghdad government will start buying wheat from Iraqi farmers later this year. Currently, three-fourths of the country's needs are provided by the United States.

But government officials say they are unwilling to finance the reconstruction of factories in the region.

"We're not taking on the burden of building factories because all government factories are unsuccessful," Ahmad said. "All over the world the private sector runs factories. The era of the government building them and employing people is over."

Mariwan Hama-Saeed is a journalist in Iraq who writes for The Institute for War & Peace Reporting, a nonprofit organization that trains journalists in areas of conflict. Readers may write to the author at the Institute for War & Peace Reporting, 48 Grays Inn Road, London WC1X 8LT, U.K.. Its Web site is http://www.iwpr.net . Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.

Posted by bhola at 06:58 AM | Comments (0)

May 05, 2006

A poem for Minamata

It is only the sea
I can trust.
When people tell me
that the sea is dirty
I curse them,
I want to strike them.
The sea ‘dirty’?
How dare they say
the sea is dirty!
It is not the sea that wrongs.
The sea has done nothing wrong.
The sea is my life.
The sea is my religion.
The sea comforts me—
it has given me courage and sustenance,
and escape from the quarrels
of shore-bound men.
When I thought I was dying,
and my hands were numb
and wouldn’t work—
and my father was dying too—
when the villagers turned against us—
it was to the sea
I would go to cry.
The sea protected my tears.
I talk crazy about the sea.
No one can understand
why I love the sea so much.
The sea has never abandoned me.
The sea is the blood of my veins.

Anonymous fisherman of Minamata

Quoted in "Beyond the Chemical Century", 1999, a report to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the Bhopal disaster.

Posted by bhola at 10:34 AM | Comments (0)

May 04, 2006

Woman speaks of 'stray cat' lives of Minamata disease family

Japan Economic Newswire

A woman told a public meeting in the city of Minamata, Kumamoto Prefecture, on Sunday of the hardships Minamata disease had caused her family, saying, "We led lives like stray cats."

Her two younger sisters were among the four people in Minamata who were reported as having a "strange disease" on May 1, 1956, now regarded as the day on which the degenerative neurological disease caused by mercury poisoning was officially recognized.

Speaking on condition of anonymity on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the disease being formally acknowledged, she said, "As my sisters were initially believed to have caught a contagious disease, our house was sterilized."

One of the two sisters eventually died, and the woman, 62, has been taking care of the other, who was three years old when she was diagnosed. "My sister used to laugh when she felt good, but she cannot eat well at present."

"I myself sleep in my bed only once or twice a week," she said, explaining how she has to keep checking on her sister, who is often seized with cramps. "For us, the issue of Minamata disease is still continuing."

Another speaker at the meeting, Shinobu Sakamoto, who will be 50 in July, appealed to some 150 participants about the concerns that congenital Minamata disease patients like her have.

"I am now with my parents, but I feel insecure when I think about my future life," she said.

Referring to the fact that more than 3,800 unrecognized sufferers are applying for recognition even now, Sakamoto said, "Minamata disease is as old as I am, but the problem is not yet over."

In a separate move, thousands of Minamata disease victims were commemorated at a newly installed memorial in a bayside park Sunday evening prior to an anniversary memorial service there on Monday.

Minamata Mayor Katsuaki Miyamoto said at the commemoration ceremony, "We should not forget the memories of the victims or this unpr