Is Agent Orange Affecting Fort Detrick Water Pollution Problem?

Posted on November 30, 2010 by Greenberg & Bederman

The war in Vietnam seems occurred a long time ago. But for those who actually participated, we are willing to bet that they don’t view it as ancient history. There are still Vietnam veterans in America who have had difficulty coping with their experiences. Exposure to the extreme dangers of combat is not something that can be easily shrugged off. American soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan are proving that premise to still be true.

But the Vietnam War was different for a few reasons. Many veterans of that conflict brought back injuries that were neither psychological, nor were they of the sort that are consistent with combat. Many soldiers suffered from a disproportionately high rate of throat cancer, lung cancer, liver cancer, prostate cancer and soft tissue sarcoma. Many of them found that their wives were suffering from miscarriages, or that their children were being born with birth defects.

To be sure, these things can and do happen to many people, regardless of whether they served in Vietnam or not, but it is worth noting that among Vietnam veterans who took part in a military effort named “Operation Ranch Hand,” the numbers of cancer and birth defects is incredibly high.

Operation Ranch Hand was the name given to a military program in which chemical herbicides and defoliants were sprayed over the jungles of Vietnam. The purpose of spraying these chemicals was to remove the habitat, cover and support system of the Viet Cong, and to force them into the cities, where the Vietnamese population was generally less supportive of the guerilla forces or North Vietnam in general. Between 1962 and 1971, over 20 million gallons of herbicides were sprayed over the jungles in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

 

While the chemicals involved certainly did their job, they also wreaked havoc on the rural civilian population of Vietnam. Tens of thousands of civilians died early of cancer, and tens of thousands of children were born seriously deformed. And among the helicopter pilots, vehicle loaders and Special Forces units who handled the herbicide, the rate of cancer and birth defects skyrocketed.

There were two sorts of chemicals that were used to defoliate the jungles of Southeast Asia. One was called Agent Blue, but the chemical that was deemed the most effective and therefore saw the most use was called Agent Orange.

The Vietnam War was close to 40 years ago, and Southeast Asia is practically on the other side of the world, but if you think that the use of Agent Orange by the United States is not something that you should be concerned with, you should think again. Particularly if you live in the Baltimore-Washington area.

Frederick News-Post, 11/18/10: The Army sprayed about 17 pounds of a main Agent Orange ingredient on sections of Fort Detrick between 1944 and 1968, an official announced at a meeting Wednesday night. Randal Curtis, program manager for the St. Louis district of the Army Corps of Engineers, presented the preliminary Archives Search Report to the Fort Detrick Restoration Advisory Board. The findings were based on technical reports, standard operating procedures, lab notes, maps and photos uncovered in archive and records locations around the country. Curtis' office was tasked with sifting through these documents for any information on 2,4,5-T, one of two main ingredients in Agent Orange.

According to the preliminary report, Fort Detrick was the headquarters of the Chemical Warfare Service's special projects division during and after World War II, making it a hub for offensive and defensive biological research and development. 2, 4, 5-T was tested at Fort Detrick in three main time periods: 1944-1951, 1953 and 1961-1963.

As you can probably infer from that story, Agent Orange was not the only chemical that was tested on the grounds of Fort Detrick. But Agent Orange was sprayed into the ground, and the harmful effects of this chemical is well documented. And if you consider that Fort Detrick is currently the site of Army medical research, and that it used to be the headquarters of the Army biological and chemical weapons program, you can well imagine that the health of the surrounding residents is probably considerably worse than those who do not live near there.

The EPA has designated Fort Detrick a Superfund Cleanup Site, which means that in terms of the level of toxic waste and the potential harm that this place can do to the environment and the health of people around the area, its cleanup is an absolute priority. But that is small consolation to those who have already gotten sick, or worse. Frederick County is currently determining whether or not the surrounding area will officially be designated a cancer cluster, but even if they determine that it is not, it is impossible to imagine that sixty years of chemical and biological weapons testing and medical waste dumping had no effect on the groundwater or air quality for nearby residents.

Greenberg and Bederman is currently offering legal help for residents around Fort Detrick, Maryland who have suffered from unexplained illnesses, including birth defects, throat cancer, lung cancer, prostate cancer or other serious diseases. We believe that the groundwater and air around Fort Detrick has been responsible for a high level of diseases and illnesses, and it is our hope that we can secure compensation for the victims. If you or a loved one has been affected by the pollution near Fort Detrick, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free legal consultation. 
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Groundwater Pollution At Fort Detrick

Posted on September 29, 2010 by Greenberg & Bederman

Most of you have probably heard of the saying “Where there’s smoke there’s fire.” Maryland can now try out a new version of that old adage, which is “Where the water turns green, it’s probably Fort Detrick.”

For those of you who don’t know, Fort Detrick is a military base in Frederick County, Maryland. As of right now it is the headquarters for the United States Army Medical Research Division, but it also had the rather dubious distinction of being the headquarters for our biological weapons research during and after World War II.

The various bits of detritus that came from years of biological weapons research and years of medical research ended up being tossed unceremoniously in a few landfills on the grounds of the Fort, which resulted in the whole area being placed on the EPA’s Superfund cleanup list. This has also allegedly resulted in the immediate surrounding area being known as a “cancer cluster,” which is what you call any area where there is a higher than normal cancer rate among the residents. It turns out that waste of any kind has a tendency to seep into the soil on which it is tossed. So while the folks at Ft. Detrick might have thought that simply placing a fence around a few acres of toxic waste might be enough to keep the surrounding environment safe from pollution, it is apparent that they did not consider the effects that groundwater pollution would have on the people who live in the surrounding areas.

There is currently a movement going on up in Frederick County which involves people who have had their lives adversely affected by the decades of severe groundwater contamination that Fort Detrick has been responsible for. While it hasn’t escalated to lawsuit status as of yet, this group of people who are obviously suffering have not received much help or many answers from the United States Army.

So with all of this pollution and extremely shady government programs as a backdrop, the recent bizarre events regarding green water flowing from Fort Detrick and into the surrounding area has probably not made residents of Frederick County feel much better about Fort Detrick’s ability to control its pollution.

From the Frederick Post:

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has launched a criminal investigation into what appears to be green trace dye added to several water sources in Frederick, Fort Detrick officials said.

EPA spokesman Roy Seneca would not confirm or deny the criminal investigation Thursday. Still, Fort Detrick spokesman Rob Sperling said the EPA was in the middle of a criminal investigation and other state and federal agencies were involved. 

Green water appeared at Fort Detrick on Sept. 2 when workers at the Army post's waste water treatment plant noticed it in a tank and then later flowing into the Monocacy River.

As of right now, we have no idea what this green dye is, and it appears to be harmless, but the idea that people are walking into the YMCA to find that the swimming pool looks like it is filled with Gatorade does not fill us with confidence, especially considering what it is that they do over at Fort Detrick. By its very nature, medical research involves working with hazardous materials, and the leaking of any sort of substance into the local water supply, harmful or not, does not bode well for the waste securing methods that they have in place over there.

It took eighteen years for the local, state and federal authorities to clean up the toxic waste at Fort Detrick, and you would think that now they have a relatively clean slate that they would put more of an effort in to keeping the public safe, especially considering that the cancer rate in the surrounding area. Yet it is apparent with this latest spill that business as usual is the order of the day.

Greenberg and Bederman is an injury law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland, and we are currently offering legal assistance to anyone who has suffered obvious detrimental physical effects from industrial pollution, particularly groundwater pollution. We can help anyone in Maryland, Virginia or Washington, D.C. If you or a loved one has been made ill due to groundwater contamination, contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free groundwater pollution legal consultation today.
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The Quiet Water Pollution Story

Posted on June 23, 2010 by Greenberg & Bederman

In the midst of all of the coverage of the BP oil spill, and in the wake of all of the coverage of Hurricane Katrina, it’s very probable that many of you have never heard of a town called Mossville, Louisiana.

This isn’t surprising. Hurricane Katrina was an unmitigated disaster which caused widespread flooding of New Orleans, as well as billions of dollars worth of property damage that the citizens of the Gulf Coast are still recovering from. The BP oil spill is an equally crippling disaster which has the potential to ruin the lives and livelihoods of thousands of fisherman and people who make their livings off of tourist dollars, which is a dubious proposition if the beaches are coated in dead marine life and hundreds of thousands of gallons of crude oil.

But while Mossville, Louisiana doesn’t have the same level of camera-ready and newsworthy coverage levels of the BP leak and Hurricane Katrina, it certainly deserves mention as one of the hardest hit areas in Louisiana. This is a town where oil spills and hurricanes are quite honestly the least of the residents’ problems. In Mossville, simply getting up in the morning is dangerous. Drinking water out of the tap is a risky proposition. Planting tomatoes or flowers in the garden could conceivably lead to hospitalization and eventual death. The everyday mundane processes that any other American goes through on a daily basis takes on a different and dangerous aspect for the citizens of Mossville, because Mossville, Louisiana is known as a “toxic town.”

This area in Southwestern Louisiana has the misfortune to be virtually surrounded by a string of 20 industrial facilities, with many of them routinely emitting extremely dangerous pollution into the air, water and soil. These pollutions are known as dioxins, and they have been known to cause cancer, damage to the reproductive system, and can be harmful to fetal development. There is absolutely no minimum level of dioxin that is safe for human beings to come into contact with.

This area is home to the following industrial plants and facilities, which have released the following amounts of pollutants into the air, water and soil:

 LOUISIANA PIGMENT CO. 3,122,196 lbs.

CITGO PETROLEUM CORP. 2,242,249 lbs.

FIRESTONE SYNTHETIC RUBBER 2,144,458 lbs.

PPG INDUSTRIES, INC. 546,705 lbs.

CONDEA-VISTA CO. (now GEORGIA GULF) 449,449 lbs.

ARCO CHEMICAL CORP. 228,885 lbs.

CONOCO LAKE CHARLES REFINERY 199,996 lbs.

WESTLAKE POLYMERS CORP. 182,981 lbs.

OCCIDENTAL CHEMICAL CORP. 153,788 lbs.

W.R. GRACE AND CO. 137,400 lbs.

OLIN CORP. 55,828 lbs.

CALCASIEU REFINING CO. 44,341 lbs.

MONTELL USA INC. 32,686 lbs.

CARBOLINE CO. 22,538 lbs.

BIOLAB INC. 17,494 lbs.

WESTLAKE PETROCHEMICALS CORP. 16,932 lbs.

WESTLAKE STYRENE CORP. 12,168 lbs.

RESIN SYS. INC. 9,070 lbs.

INDUSTRIAL PIPE AND PLASTICS 7,000 lbs.

CERTAINTEED CORP. 4,500 lbs.

There is practically no way that being surrounded by so much pollution from industrial and chemical facilities could not have an adverse effect on nearby residents. Health surveys in Mossville have shown epidemic levels of sickness, from respiratory problems to extremely elevated cancer rates to a very high level of young and untimely deaths. It would take a legendary amount of obtuseness to not be able to link the numbers of illnesses and deaths in Mossville to the surrounding chemical plants polluting the air, water and ground water, yet it has taken decades for the Environmental Protection Agency to finally declare this area as hazardous to the health of the residents.

It certainly wasn’t for lack of trying on the part of the residents of Mossville. They have been trying for a few decades to get someone in the government to realize that they are literally being polluted to death by the surrounding chemical plants. And while it is certainly a positive development that the EPA is taking action and is in the process of designating the area for a Superfund cleanup, we can’t help but think that this is too little, too late for the residents of this town who have already become sick or who have already died. In scrutinizing all of the reports, we can’t help but wonder a few things.

What level of responsibility is Citgo, Firestone, Arco et al. prepared to accept? Pollution doesn’t just pop out of nowhere, after all. Are the responsible parties making every effort to lower pollution levels? Are they at least admitting culpability and making every effort to make things right for the citizens of Mossville? Are they paying the medical bills of those who became ill? Are they offering restitution to the families of those who died of their illnesses?

Most likely the polluters will deny responsibility. All of these polluters are in a unique position in that they can point the finger of blame at all the other polluters. It’s the equivalent of finding a burning house that is surrounded by fifteen guys who all have lighters in their pockets and empty gasoline cans at their feet. They all may look like they started the fire, but it might take some extra work to actually prove which one (or ones) actually did it. This task is made all that much tougher when each arsonist is simply pointing at the guy on his right.

Greenberg and Bederman is a Washington, D.C. basedinjury law firm that is currently assisting those who have developed illnesses due to groundwater pollution. Americans have the right to live in areas that are free from the harmful effects of dioxins and other groundwater contaminants, and anyone who becomes ill as the result of irresponsible industrial practices should be fully compensated for medical bills, pain and suffering, and the loss of value of their homes and property. If you or a loved one has adversely affected by contaminated groundwater in Maryland, Washington, D.C. or Virginia, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free water contamination legal consultation.
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