A study in the American Journal of Public Health raises the possibility that inadvertent exposure to burning sarin gas caused an increased incidence of brain tumors among soldiers serving in the first Gulf War.

The review, performed by researchers from the National Academy of Sciences and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs compared death records of Army veterans exposed to fumes when two caches of chemical munitions were destroyed in Iraq in 1991. At the time, authorities were unaware of the existence of sarin among the reserve.

Although the deadly immediate effects of sarin are well documented, the long-term effects are unknown.

In the study, an association was found between exposure to the plume and one particular illness--brain cancer. In fact, soldiers exposed to the smoke were found to have twice the risk of brain cancer as soldiers not exposed.

Nevertheless, the finding does not determine that exposure to the burning chemicals (sarin) caused brain tumors and eventual death as a correlation or association between an event and a consequence does not "prove" cause and effect.

The finding does, however suggest the need for additional research to study the relationship over an extended duration.

In this situation, the discovery that the longer an individual was exposed to the fumes, the higher the chance of brain cancer, adds credibility to the argument that something in the smoke could have triggered the cancer.

Dr. Robert Haley of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas suggests additional research is necessary to determine how the exposure could have caused cancer on a cellular level. He confirms that "brain cancer would be consistent with Gulf War veterans being exposed to an agent that created nerve cell damage."