Anniston Star
December 15, 2002

Medical mystery

By J.Wes Yoder
Star Staff Writer
12-15-2002

Right now, in western Anniston, a woman's face is twisting. Her mouth is pulling, and her lips are getting closer to her ear. Her left eyelid is fluttering, and to compensate, she opens her right eye wide - her dark pupil focused on a spot on the ceiling. Soon, her face will lock, like a tightly drawn knot, and tears will escape from eyes clamped shut.

And right now, in a yellow house with a tidy lawn, the same woman's hands are working. They turn page after page of medical studies, highlighting and underlining with the steadiness of a surgeon, then slipping the clues into a notebook. Soon, her evidence will be thicker than the family Bible.

And right now, in a place that eyes cannot see and hands cannot feel, this woman's hope is waning.

It was strong seven years ago, in the days after a force as shapeless as the wind struck at her health. Doctors have been unable to determine the cause of her sickness, but she believes the symptoms point to Anniston's stockpile of chemical weapons. Her search for the truth has been fruitless. Soon, hope may flicker out.

Right now, Arametta Porter needs help. "Soon" is just another tired tomorrow.

"I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy," Porter, 54, says.

Then she laughs. It is not uncommon for her to laugh after expressing her darkest thoughts, maybe as a way of drawing back from the weight of her emotions.

But behind her smile a suspicion has brooded for years. Porter believes that on the other side of a gate just down the road, somebody knows what is wrong with her health - somebody who could help, but won't.

While 12 doctors have fumbled for a way to explain Porter's condition, the former science teacher has followed a theoretical trail of odds, accidents and fate that leads to a mishap that occurred seven years ago in an earthen storage igloo at the Anniston Army Depot.

Now an Anniston Star study of Army records has revealed that, while the Army might not be guilty of purposely deceiving Porter, there may be merit to the sick woman's long-researched belief that she was exposed to Sarin nerve agent, a depot-stored chemical designed to do to humans what Raid does to wasps.

"I'm not out there trying to sue anybody," she says. "I need help."

The wind and the worry

It was already 84 degrees at 7:45 a.m. on Aug. 3, 1995 - the heat well on its way to eclipsing a 90-plus-degree reading for the 46th straight day. The wind from Hurricane Erin had reached Anniston ahead of the rain, whipping up gusts of 19 mph.
Porter, an early riser, had eaten breakfast and decided to carry her recycling bin to the street.

A strong, healthy woman at the time, she was walking in her driveway, under a tall oak tree, when she says she stepped into a shear wind, the downward kind that knocks airplanes from the sky. She says it pushed on the bin, making it heavy and awkward to hold. She didn't think to drop it, instead stumbling around with the weight of it "like I was drunk."

The force lasted a few moments. She looked around, a bit embarrassed. Nobody on her street was outside.

Fifteen minutes later, Porter heard an "exploding noise in her ears." Her body began to tingle. Her eyes felt strange. The muscles in her face began to tighten, and she could not extend her tongue from her mouth. Breathing became an effort, so she lay down on her bed.
Her 76-year-old mother found her a few minutes later and called an ambulance. At Regional Medical Center, she began to vomit. Her face began to twitch, and her nose began to drain.

"I thought I was dying, the way I felt," she said.

Emergency room doctors diagnosed her with a stroke and prescribed therapy. But therapists soon agreed her continued symptoms, particularly her twitching face, were not consistent with a stroke, which can cause a face to droop but cannot induce sustained spasms. Other doctors suspected Bell's palsy, but ruled that out as well.

During this time, Porter began to study Anniston Star reports on a Sarin nerve agent leak at the depot that occurred Aug. 1, 1995, and that was not contained until the morning of Aug. 3, the morning Porter fell ill.

A single drop of Sarin on a man's skin could kill him in minutes. First produced by Nazi chemists, Sarin is colorless and odorless. Large quantities of Sarin are stored in 50-year-old, decaying rockets on the northeast corner of the depot. Leaking rockets are common at the depot, and are part of the reason incineration of the munitions will begin next year. But the leaks in August of 1995 were the first to escape the storage facility and set off outside alarms, resulting in a Level 2, limited-area emergency.

In press releases, the Army stressed that, because only "trace amounts" of leaked agent were detected, the public was not at risk to exposure.

A final press release, on Aug. 23 of that year, said, "Because of all of the safety and security procedures as well as the specialized equipment used by the highly skilled people who perform the various activities associated with these munitions, it must be emphasized, once again, that at No repeat No time was there any danger to the depot workforce or people in surrounding communities."

Sickness and suspicions

Porter was not convinced. She mentioned the leak to her doctors. They told her they had not studied nerve agents enough to address the possibility she had been exposed. She contacted the Army, the National Weather Service and numerous scientific Web sites, trying to gather information that could support or refute her theory. Meanwhile, her condition worsened.

The spasms in her face became more frequent, rendering her speechless and blind for a minute or so a couple of times an hour. Worse, certain sensory overloads - bright sunlight, loud or constant noise, a strong food spice or a potent cleaning agent such as Pine Sol -

When this happened in her classroom, first-graders became frightened. Some cried. So she retired. It happened at church when the pastor would tell of repentance and healing and the flock would become a chorus of Alleluias and Amens - too much noise for her condition to handle. For three years, she has stayed at home on Sunday.

"I have a problem," she says.

Army spokespeople agree. Cathy Coleman, public affairs officer for Anniston Chemical Activity, sat teary eyed at Porter's kitchen table at the sight of the sick woman's face. For the most part, Coleman and the Army have been cooperative, providing experts to address her suspicions.

But to Porter, the Army's answers seem as porous as the corroding rockets that leaked vapor into the windy skies all those years ago. When they say they can do nothing to help her, it wounds her in a way a nerve agent could not.

"It's heartbreaking at times," she says.

Fuzzy facts

In 1998, the Alabama Department of Public Health requested a report from the depot on behalf of Porter. In the report, dated March 20, 1998, Lisa Black, Anniston Army Depot medical director, wrote, "At the time of the leak on 1 August 1995, the wind direction was 114 degrees, from the southeast, which would generate a downwind plume away from
Anniston and the area in which Mrs. Porter resides."

This response, like others in the report, seems to ignore the fact that Army records show the leaking rockets were not sealed immediately, but continued to leak until the morning of Aug. 3, 1995. On Aug. 1, the wind was blowing away from Anniston. But on the morning of Aug. 3, when Porter became ill, the doors to the igloo were left open while depot workers canned the rockets. And the winds, brought on from Hurricane Erin, were shifty.

The Army report lists as symptoms of mild nerve agent exposure pinpoint pupils, dim vision, headache, runny nose, excess salivation and shortness of breath. It lists as severe exposure symptoms respiratory depression, generalized muscular twitching, convulsions, loss of consciousness and loss of bowel and bladder control.

When Porter initially was taken to the hospital, her records show, she complained of six of the 10 symptoms, including all of the severe-exposure symptoms except for convulsions and loss of consciousness.

The Army report goes on to say, "Mrs. Porter's symptoms, while concerning, are not consistent with nerve agent exposure."
The report's conclusion again ignored the fact that the leaks were not contained until Aug. 3. It said, "there is no possibility of a causal relationship between the small nerve agent leak at ANAD on 1 August 1995 and Mrs. Porter's symptoms which began some 48 hours later."

But now depot officials admit that the amount of nerve agent that escaped into the hot outside air is unknown. It is presumable that, because the door to the storage igloo that housed the leaking rockets was left open while workers conducted emergency operations, some immeasurable amount of agent was wafting continuously into the Anniston skies for a prolonged period of time.

"We (the Army) can't tell for sure how much," Coleman said.

The best the Army could do was set up monitoring devices around the igloo. But the detectors only read vapor that comes in contact with the detectors themselves, and are unable to provide any exact estimate of the total quantity of released agent.

Detectors 25 feet from the igloo produced vapor readings indicating there was enough agent in the air to cause minor effects in people, as defined by the Environmental Protection Agency's guidelines. However, the effects from that amount of Sarin would be minor and unnoticeable.

But outside monitors were only used on the first day of the leak, Coleman said, so there are no estimates of the amount of agent that seeped out Aug. 2 or 3.

It is possible that the escaped agent could have risen into the surrounding air quickly, because of the heat, making the detectors less reliable, said Michael Myirski, an Army meteorologist at Soldier and Biological Chemical Command in Maryland. However,

Myirski added that an "unstable atmosphere" is ideal for a Sarin leak. Although high winds can carry the vapor to a populated area quickly, wind also tends to dissipate the chemical, making it quite weak, he said.

"There are some people who are hyper-sensitive," he said. It has not been determined if Porter is this type of person.

The Army repeatedly has told Porter that the Sarin would have lost its potency as it was dispersed. But a current Army profile of the agent reads, "Under wet and humid conditions, Sarin degrades swiftly, but as the temperature rises up to a certain point, Sarin's lethal duration increases, despite the humidity Doses which are potentially life-threatening may be only slightly larger than those producing least effects."

Porter, who has two college science degrees, knows vapor rises in hot weather. She theorizes that, in the shifting winds and the heat, escaping Sarin could have retained its potency and could have been present in the downward gust of wind that hit her in her driveway.

But, because the vapor evaporates at the same rate as water, tracking the course of the agent through the atmosphere would be as impossible as tracking the steam a teapot whistles into a kitchen. Furthermore, the likelihood of a dangerous concentration of agent vapor rising into the heights of the atmosphere, traveling some three miles, then being carried downward in a shear wind at the very moment Porter was taking out her trash for recycling seems improbable.

But while the 1998 Army report ruled out the possibility of Porter being exposed, Coleman now says, "It's not beyond the realm of remote possibility.

"But it's so unlikely."

On this point, Porter and the Army agree.

But, Porter says, "strange accidents will occur."

And while her doctors have ruled out all diagnoses in their frame of reference - stroke, Bell's palsy and Human Facial Spasm Syndrome - Porter, with years of research, has not been able to rule out the chance that her unwanted lifestyle is a result of a freak nerve agent exposure.

"If she wasn't the kind of person she is," Porter's mother says, "She'd be crazy or dead."

New evidence

For many years, nothing was known of Sarin exposure's long-term effects.
However, a recent study by The Stockholm International Peace Institute on Sarin reads,

"People who did not accumulate a lethal dose but did not receive appropriate medical treatment may suffer permanent neurological damage."

After several MRI tests on Porter showed no brain damage, Charles Jackson, a retired military doctor, drove two hours from his home in Columbus, Ga., to visit her. He suggested she get a Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography scan, a SPECT. In his study of hundreds of Gulf War veterans at the Veterans Administration hospital in Tuskegee, many of whom have compelling evidence that they were exposed to nerve agents, the SPECT scan registered brain damage while an MRI did not.

Porter was given the exam, and it showed impairments on the right parietal lobe of her brain, the same place where damage registered on many Gulf War veterans. "I think she's really sick," Jackson said. "When you put it all together, I think you have a legitimate case (of nerve agent exposure)."

A link?

A couple of years ago, a young woman approached Porter at the grocery store. "You look just like my momma," she told her.

Porter went to see the woman, whose face also twists and twitches on her left side. The woman, who is employed by the Army in the Midwest and who does not want her name printed, told Porter that her spasms started in August of 1995.

She was living in Anniston then, and her husband was about to retire from the depot.

Unlike Porter, she had no immediate health crisis. She did consult physicians, and has continued to seek help for seven years, but her sickness has continued to progress.

Lately, she has developed a heart palpitation and breathing trouble. Her vision, like Porter's, is leaving her. She has a new stutter, and it takes a considerable amount of courage for her to go out in public. As in Porter's case, bright light, cold air, a loud noise, a cleaning agent or a strong-tasting food will distort her face to the point that she cannot talk.

Besides, "people notice me," she said. "It's making me self-conscious. I am not getting used to it."

Staying inside, "wearing out"

It feels like worms, she says, crawling beneath her cheeks, all day long. It is a twitching reminder that she dare not go to the movies or to church or to Pell City High School basketball games, where her nephew is playing his senior season. While an hour-long spell doesn't really hurt, it is blinding, muting and hard to explain to an audience.

Arametta Porter doubts she will ever be well again. Since that August morning seven years ago, her heart has fluttered and raced. Her cardiologist doesn't know why. "I believe it's gonna wear out," Porter said.

When she talks, her lips often smack. When she eats, her mouth spits out bits of food.

These days, she is having less and less contact with the outside world - just a trip or two a week to the Winn Dixie.

It is seems unlikely Porter's theory about her health will ever be confirmed. The only available Sarin exposure test must be administered in the first few hours after exposure.

And while several studies on the long-term effects of nerve agents are under way, they are lengthy and so far inconclusive.

But, when you see death coming from a long way off, Porter says, the helplessness begs to know why.

"I know it's killing me," she says, tears falling from her cheeks like tiny drops of hope.
She recovers, as she usually does, with a laugh.

"I need answers."