Defense Environment Alert
an exclusive biweekly report on defense policies for cleanup, compliance and pollution prevention


Vol. 13, No. 16--August 9, 2005



CHEM DEMIL PROGRAM CONSIDERING GULF WAR NERVE AGENT FINDINGS

A recent study finding that nerve agent exposure during the first Gulf War may increase brain cancer deaths has prompted the Army to investigate whether the study is relevant to its chemical agent destruction program, which is incinerating chemical weapons at four of its eight remaining stockpiles.

The National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine released a study in late July finding a potential association between low-level exposure to nerve agent and an increased risk of brain cancer deaths. Additional research will be needed to confirm these preliminary findings, the study's authors say. The study's findings are published in the August 2005 edition of the American Journal of Public Health.

The study investigates the potential exposure of more than 100,000 Army Gulf War veterans to nerve agents during the March 1991 weapons demolition operations at Khamisiyah, Iraq, according to the abstract in the journal. The study examined whether the former soldiers were at a higher risk of cause-specific mortality by comparing the cause-specific mortality of these veterans with 224,980 unexposed Army Gulf War veterans, it says.

While disease-related mortality rates were similar, exposed veterans had a greater risk of brain cancer deaths, the study found. "The risk of brain cancer death was larger among those exposed 2 or more days than those exposed 1 day when both were compared separately to all unexposed veterans," the authors say in the journal article.

While the study's findings have not spurred any immediate changes to the way the Army Chemical Materials Agency (CMA) runs its state-side chemical weapons destruction program, it did "raise our interest," says a CMA spokesman. The findings have prompted CMA's risk management office to launch a preliminary look at whether they have any relevance to the CMA program. The office wants to understand what the scientific drivers are behind the study's numbers, the spokesman says.

Incineration is CMA's baseline method for destroying the country's stockpiled chemical weapons. The Army has long held its program is safe for its workers, the surrounding community and the environment, despite many legal challenges by citizen activists questioning the safety of the method.

The circumstances are completely different, the spokesman says, noting that at Khamisiyah, weapons were blown up, while at CMA's chemical weapons destruction facilities in the United States, the incineration facilities use a controlled burn to destroy 99.9999 percent of chemical agent, as required by state regulatory agencies. The two scenarios may not burn chemical agent at the same length and degree, but there could be parameters that CMA now needs to take into account, the spokesman says.

The study's results have prompted DOD to notify thousands of Gulf War veterans about the findings and remind them of the medical services available to them, according to an American Forces Press Service article. But DOD is not advising those exposed "to take any new or additional steps to take care of their health," according to a notice posted on the web site of the DOD Office of the Special Assistant for Gulf War Illnesses.

DOD initiated the study in 1997 after learning that munitions destroyed at Khamisiyah contained the nerve agents sarin and cyclosarin, the article says.

Michael Kilpatrick, DOD's deputy director for deployment health support, said in the article that the study is the first to indicate possible long-term health risks from the exposure. "Further investigation is necessary because sarin and cyclosarin have never been shown to cause cancer," the notice from the special assistant's office says.

A spokesman for the Chemical Weapons Working Group, which has long opposed incineration of stockpiled chemical munitions in favor of alternative disposal methods, called the findings "interesting," and believes they deserve further study as to their implications for workers at the chemical demilitarization sites.