| Wednesday, June 16,
2004
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PORTLAND — A doctor testified Tuesday he suffered
symptoms of possible nerve gas exposure when he treated three construction
workers evacuated from the Umatilla Chemical Depot nearly five years ago.
Dr. Joseph Gifford told a federal judge he was called to the emergency room
at Good Shepherd Medical Center in Hermiston on Sept. 15, 1999, to help treat
dozens of workers who were stricken at the site, which houses an incinerator
slated to be used to destroy part of the nation's stockpile of aging chemical
weapons.
Gifford's testimony came Tuesday, in the second
phase of a trial for 49 construction workers who sued the Army after they
became violently ill while working on the incinerator.
The doctor testified he believed he may have suffered secondary contamination
from the clothing worn by the three patients he treated. Gifford said he
suffered a variety of symptoms — including nausea, coughing, dizziness, chest
pain and a foul taste in his mouth — which he said could be traced to the
nerve gas sarin.
But under questioning by a government attorney, he admitted the symptoms
could have been caused by some other source, such as industrial chemicals.
The workers have already settled with the civilian contractor, Raytheon Demilitarization
Co., now Washington Demilitarization Co.
U.S. District Judge Dennis Hubel ruled last February the Army was negligent
for the delay in getting the workers to the hospital and the general level
of its response. In this phase of the trial, the judge will decide whether
there actually was a nerve gas leak.
In opening statements Tuesday, lawyers for the workers said there was evidence
of a leak. The Army has simply refused to admit how leaks can occur without
detection, the attorneys said.
"The Army created an illusion," said James McCandlish, the lead attorney
for the workers. "It's our job to puncture that illusion."
But James Brennan, another Justice Department attorney representing the Army,
said the Army, Raytheon, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration
and the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality each independently investigated
the incident and found no evidence of any leaks.
The only way to explain the same conclusion after four separate investigations
would be to "pursue conspiracy theory," Brennan said.
"If there was some mysterious stealth leak, it sure as heck would have been
detected," he said.
The completed incinerator is in the final testing stage before it is used
to begin destroying the 7.4 million pounds of deadly nerve gas and other
chemical weapons stored at the depot in a remote area of Eastern Oregon.
The second phase of the workers' lawsuit is expected to take about two weeks.
A third phase will be required to assess damages.
On Tuesday, Henry Miller, an attorney for the U.S. Justice Department, also
questioned Gifford about the main symptom of sarin gas exposure, a contraction
of the pupils called miosis that results in "pinpoint pupils" that do not
react to changes in light.
Miller noted that symptom was not listed in any of the medical records Gifford
filed.
"If you'd seen miosis, or pinpoint pupils, you would have noted it in your
records?" Miller asked Gifford.
"Yes," Gifford replied.
Miller also noted that exposure to the pesticide malathion is common in eastern
Oregon and also causes pinpoint pupils because it is chemically similar to
sarin.