5/13/2009

Depot worker claims mustard exposure
Doctor links former security guard's leukemia to chemical exposure

By DEAN BRICKEY
The Hermiston Herald

While workers at the Umatilla Chemical Agent Disposal Facility prepare to destroy ton containers of mustard blister agent, Jeff Pardue of Hermiston still suffers from his alleged exposure to it.

Pardue, 58, a civilian security guard at the Umatilla Chemical Depot for 28 years, deals daily with respiratory distress. Six years ago a doctor diagnosed him with a rare form of leukemia that's linked to chemical exposure. The disease went into remission in 2004, but his chemotherapy for the leukemia caused painful, chronic pancreatitis.

Bruce Henrickson, spokesman for the Umatilla Chemical Depot, said the International Agency for Research on Cancer has cited HD mustard as a human carcinogen.

"Mustard agent has been medically linked to certain types of cancer, such as lung and acute leukemias, but not chronic leukemia," he said.

A Hermiston resident most of his life, Pardue says he was exposed to mustard agent his first year on the job as a security guard in 1977. After a year or two, he took off a couple of years to attend college, but returned to work at the Depot in the early 1980s. He still works there.

Pardue remembers one night vividly. As a security guard, it was his responsibility as a member of a security team, to inspect the munitions and other containers. The 2,635 mustard ton containers, several of which leaked, he said, rested on pallets on the ground in an enclosed area.

Especially on hot, summer nights, Pardue said, the mustard agent oozed from a plug beneath the metal bonnet atop the containers. He described the containers as similar to small propane tanks, about 8 feet long and 18 inches to 2 feet in diameter.

"It looks like kind of a dark brown oily substance," he said, describing the leaking agent. "When it's cooler, it's more like molasses."

It was no secret some mustard containers leaked, Pardue said, adding, "Hundreds knew."

Henrickson said official records do not indicate significant numbers of leaking mustard ton containers.

"During the 1977 time period in question," he said, "only one leaking mustard container was identified .... That leaker report ... indicated a droplet of liquid on the left valve cap."

Henrickson said Depot personnel recently searched historic leaker records and found reports of 13 leaking mustard containers between 1974 and 1981.

Pardue said the mustard containers came to the Depot in the 1960s.

"I'm assuming those plugs were the original plugs ... from the manufacturer," he said. "Why that was let go like that back then, I don't know. It was foolish and stupid."

He said the U.S. Army officials directed the workers to use tin cans to catch the oozing agent.

"They were just sitting on 2 by 4s on the ground, beneath the containers," he said.

Henrickson said Army officials disagree with any negative characterization of Army's responses to leaking munitions.

"The Army has provided in the past, and continues to provide, appropriate training to employees to respond to indications of the presence of chemical agent, the best available monitoring and detection equipment, protective equipment and training in the use of that equipment," he said.

Pardue described his encounter with the leaking containers as first noticing the odor of garlic.

"I'll never forget that as long as I live," he said, relating the time he lost his sense of smell. "You can only smell it one time. I remember after the first time, I got so gosh-darned scared."

Henrickson confirmed mustard agent smells like garlic and is hazardous, but it's a blister agent, not an inhalant.

"Short term, exposure to mustard vapors can impair the continued ability to smell its odor," Henrickson said. "Longer term, it's not medically reasonable to believe that a person's sense of smell would be permanently damaged by smelling mustard agent fumes unless that person had mustard blisters or burns inside the nasal passage."

Pardue said his sense of smell eventually returned, but it took about a week.

"And then out you go again, and there it goes again," he said, describing subsequent encounters with the alleged leaking mustard containers.

Eventually, his exposure caught up with him.

"About six to eight months afterward, I started developing a pretty bad cough - something similar to bronchial pneumonia," Pardue said. "It just kept getting worse and worse and worse."

He's visited several doctors since that first exposure. But Pardue said it took the first physician three or four years before he connected Pardue's condition with exposure to chemical agent.

"There's nothing they can do," he said.

Pardue estimates his medical bills have totaled $70,000 in the past five years. His personal expense has ranged between $22,000 and $25,000 with insurance picking up the remainder.

"I'm a little angry about that," he said.

In an effort to get some help with his mounting medical bills, Pardue has filed a federal Workers' Compensation claim. He said Army officials are working with him. They decline, however, to discuss the matter because of privacy rules.

Jeannine Lupton, a public affairs specialist in the U.S. Department of Labor regional office in Seattle, confirmed Pardue has an open case, but said department officials couldn't comment on it either.

"Everyone tells me they want to get to the bottom of this issue," Pardue said.

He does, too.

"It's not fun being sick," he said, calling the pancreatitis "very, very painful."

"All they can do is put you on pain medications," he said, "but they'll only prescribe so much, and that's it."