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Ind. Guard seeks troops exposed to chemicals

EVANSVILLE, Ind. — The Indiana National Guard is still trying to track down former soldiers who may have been exposed to a toxic chemical while serving in Iraq in 2003.

Indiana Adjutant Gen. R. Martin Umbarger said the Guard is working to contact all 139 soldiers with the 1/152nd Infantry based out of Jasper and Tell City, and their larger battalion of 660 soldiers, the Evansville Courier & Press reported Saturday.

“We’re knocking on doors, we’re calling friends. We know who they are,” he told a state legislative panel Friday. “But there are still a number we have not gotten in contact with.”

Umbarger said the soldiers need medical evaluations to determine if they were exposed to sodium dichromate — a known carcinogen — while guarding the Qarmat Ali water treatment plant in Basra, Iraq, for about six months after the Iraq war started.

Of the 660 Indiana soldiers, Umbarger said, about half have been discharged from the military. The remainder still are enlisted in the Guard, serving either in Iraq or stationed in Indiana, the Courier & Press reported.

Umbarger told the legislative panel Friday that the former soldiers must be located for evaluation and their exposure documented in medical records.

That would allow them to receive medical treatment at Veterans Administration hospitals.

The Guard in August hosted town meetings in Evansville, Jasper, Terre Haute and elsewhere to get the word out and set up a hot line — (800) 237-2850, ext. 3128 — for former soldiers who suspect they were exposed.

The concern is that the soldiers may have inhaled sodium dichromate — a known carcinogen — touched the chemical or had it land on their skin during dust storms.

Next week, Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., plans to introduce legislation to create an Agent Orange-style registry of current and former soldiers exposed to sodium dichromate, his spokesman Eric Kleiman said.

Bayh’s office has been reviewing the issue all summer. Late Friday, Bayh sent a letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Army Secretary Pete Geren asking how soldiers exposed to toxic contaminants will be tracked and provided for medically.

The Indiana soldiers apparently underwent X-rays and blood tests for sodium dichromate when their Iraq deployments ended in 2003 or 2004, and the results showed no high levels, Umbarger said.

But Bayh’s letter to Gates and Geren expresses concern that the Army testing didn’t occur within the four-month window of time necessary to gauge health effects of sodium dichromate and that an out-of-date procedure for judging toxin amounts was used.

Umbarger said Friday that one soldier who served with the unit is known to have died from lung cancer within the past two years, and another has been diagnosed with cancer of the sinus cavity.

Medical references say sodium dichromate is a known carcinogen that can cause cancers of the lung and respiratory tract.

At the Qarmat Ali plant, the chemical was reportedly was used to remove corrosion in pipes that pumped water into oil fields for oil production, the Boston Globe reported.

Although the possible exposure occurred in 2003, Umbarger said, he only learned of it in June through a phone call from Sen. Byron Dorgan, a Democrat from North Dakota, warning him of what a Senate committee had discovered.

According to the Boston Globe, Dorgan’s Senate committee conducted hearings in June about a private contractor, KBR, that now operates the Qarmat Ali plant.

American employees of KBR who were sickened by sodium dichromate testified they had replaced Indiana troops who previously had guarded the facility in 2003, prompting concerns about the soldiers’ health as well.