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http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=67676

Decades later, U.S. military pollution in Philippines linked to deaths

By Travis J. Tritten, Stars and Stripes

Pacific edition, Tuesday, February 2, 2010

CLARK AIR BASE, Philippines – The U. S. military is long gone from bases in the Philippines, but its legacy remains buried here.

Toxic waste was spilled on the ground, pumped into waterways and buried in landfills for decades at two sprawling Cold War-era bases.

Today, ice cream shops, Western-style horse ranches, hotels and public parks have sprung up on land once used by the Air Force and the Navy — a benign facade built on land the Philippine government said is still polluted with asbestos, heavy metals and fuel.

Records of about 500 families who sought refuge on the deserted bases after a 1991 volcanic eruption indicate 76 people died and 68 others were sickened by pollutants on the bases. A study in 2000 for the Philippine Senate also linked the toxins to “unusually high occurrence of skin disease, miscarriages, still births, birth defects, cancers, heart ailments and leukemia.”

The 1991 base closing agreement gave the Philippines billions of dollars in military infrastructure and real estate at the bases and in return cleared the United States of any responsibility for the pollution. The Department of Defense told Stars and Stripes it has no authority to undertake or pay for environmental cleanup at the closed bases.

Philippine government efforts never gained traction. Philippine President Joseph Estrada formed a task force in 2000 to take on the issue, but it fell dormant and unfunded after he left office a year later. Efforts by private groups and environmentalists to force a cleanup have largely fizzled.

After two decades, the base closing agreement has run up a troubling environmental record. Filipinos claim exposure to U.S. pollutants has brought suffering and death.

As the U.S. military works to become greener in the 21st century, the Philippines stand as a dark reminder of how environmental responsibilities can go astray overseas.

Both the Air Force and the Navy polluted haphazardly in the Philippines.

The Navy pumped 3.75 million gallons of untreated sewage each day into local fishing and swimming waters at Subic Bay, according to a 1992 report by what was then known as the General Accounting Office.

The bases poured fuel and chemicals from firefighting exercises directly into the water table and used underground storage tanks without leak detection equipment, the agency found.

At least three sites at the Subic Bay Navy base — two landfills and an ordnance disposal area — are dangerously polluted with materials such as asbestos, metals and fuels, the Philippines government found after an environmental survey there.

Clark Air Base was a staging area during the Vietnam War. Its aviation and vehicle operations contaminated eight sites with oil, petroleum lubricants, pesticides, PCB and lead, according to a 1997 environmental survey by the Philippine government.

Before the U.S. closed the bases, it drew up a rough bill for cleaning the hazardous pollution.

Though they never tested the water or soil, the Air Force and the Navy estimated cleanup at each could cost up to $25 million — the average cost of handling the most polluted sites back in the United States, according to the GAO.

Rose Ann Calma is believed to be one of the warning signs of pollution at Clark Air Base.

Now 13 years old, she weighs just 32 pounds and must wear diapers. Cerebral palsy and severe mental retardation have stolen her ability to speak or walk.

Her mother and about 500 other families who were displaced by a volcanic eruption in 1991 moved onto the base and set up a tent village.

They drilled shallow wells on a former motor pool site and drank the untreated water — despite an oily sheen — until they were moved off the land in the late 1990s.

Records of the families, published by the Philippines Senate, said 144 people were sickened at the camp, 76 of whom died.

It said at least 19 children were born with disabilities, diseases and deformities between 1996 and 1999.

Tests in 1995 by the Philippine Department of Health confirmed wells on Clark were contaminated with oil and grease, a byproduct of decades of military use.

“If it is God’s will, then I accept it,” Rose Ann’s mother, Susan Calma, said recently.

In a village near Subic Bay, Norma Abraham, 58, holds an X-ray showing the lung disease that killed her husband, Guillermo.

Her husband worked through the 1980s and early 1990s sorting the Navy waste that went into local landfills, which are the most polluted sites at Subic Bay.

Many aborigines like Abraham, who are among the poorest in a poor country, were paid about 30 cents per day to hand-sort recyclable metals from Navy waste that included asbestos, paint and batteries, villagers told Stars and Stripes.

No protective equipment other than gloves was ever used, and asbestos dust was often thick in the air, the villagers said. Sometimes, when a truck dumped new waste for sorting, they said the workers would faint from the toxic fumes.

Guillermo Abraham began to cough, feel tightness in his lungs and have trouble breathing while working there, his wife said.

The lung ailment plagued him through his life and after an X-ray in January showed he was terminally ill with lung disease, he died on May 29, Norma Abraham said.

His disease, which mirrors asbestosis, is the most common ailment and killer among the 70 or so families who worked with the Navy’s waste, according to the villagers.

The aborigines rarely get quality medical treatment and do not keep birth or death records. But they compiled a list for Stars and Stripes of 41 people who they believe died over the years from toxic exposure.

Any real chance for an environmental cleanup was scuttled by the two governments in the agreement that gave the Philippines billions of dollars in base infrastructure and real estate in return for absolving the United States of any responsibility for the pollution.

As a result, the United States has no legal responsibility or authority to conduct a cleanup, and an influential Philippines politician said that government has little interest in the problem.

“It is not one of its priorities,” said Philippine Sen. Aquilino Pimentel Jr., a former majority leader and Senate president. “If it was, it would have been done a long time ago.”

Dolly Yanan keeps the records and photos of the gray-faced, emaciated and disabled children believed to have been poisoned by U.S. military pollution in the Subic Bay area.

The records count 38 deaths from disease between 2000 and 2003.

But the record-keeping has begun to lapse in recent years as hope for a cleanup and enthusiasm for the cause recedes.

“For the past four or five years, we cannot track the leukemia,” said Yanan, who runs a community center in Olongapo City.

A coalition of citizens known as the People’s Task Force for Bases Cleanup has fought for U.S. accountability for two decades and met with a string of disappointments.

The Philippine Senate inquiry and task force in 2000 led to no action, and a lawsuit designed to force a U.S.-led environmental assessment survey, filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco, was thrown out in 2003.

“If only our government was strong enough, I think there would have been a cleanup or at least an initial assessment,” Yanan said. “First, it should be our government who should have a strong will and call for a cleanup.”

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/02/01/vieques.illness.part.2/

Two daughters with cancer: Is the U.S. to blame?

By Abbie Boudreau and Scott Bronstein, CNN Special Investigations Unit

February 2, 2010 11:03 a.m. EST

Meet a mother from Vieques and her two daughters who both suffer from cancer on tonight’s Campbell Brown, 8 ET

Vieques, Puerto Rico (CNN) — Each day after work, Nanette Rosa takes her two daughters to feed their horses. It’s their favorite part of the day — a time they don’t think about pain.

“It’s really difficult for my mom to have two daughters with cancer,” said 16-year-old Coral, the older daughter. “Because sometimes she’s got two of us in the hospital at the same time, and we both get sick at the same time. And sometimes she doesn’t have anyone to help her, and it really affects her.”

The Rosas live on Vieques, an American island off Puerto Rico. For nearly 60 years, the U.S. military used much of the island as a bombing range, dropping vast quantities of live bombs and missiles in weapons tests. Now, about three-quarters of the island’s residents — including Coral and her 14-year-old sister Inna — are part of a lawsuit that claims the bombing range made them sick.

“There’s a lot of people here dying of cancer,” Coral said. “I have my little cousin dying of cancer. I have my sister that has cancer. My boyfriend’s mom died of cancer. His dad has cancer of the skin. A lot of people are suffering here of cancer, ’cause what they did here in Vieques.”

As a toddler, Coral was diagnosed with neuroblastoma, a cancer that afflicts younger children. Her mother says much of Coral’s stomach and intestines had to be replaced as a result of the cancer.

“Almost everything is plastic,” Nanette Rosa said. “So when she eats certain foods, it produces diarrhea, which has caused dehydration. She gets sick a lot, and certain foods she cannot eat like regular people.”

The operations have left Coral with a six-inch gash across her stomach, along with emotional scars.

“Sometimes I feel sad, ’cause everybody calls me ‘plastic intestines,’ ” she said. “They say, ‘Oh, you have a plastic belly.’ And I tell them, ‘You know what? If you were in this condition, how would you feel?’ ”

And doctors found a large tumor in Inna’s mouth when she was 7.

“It was very swollen, and it looked like there was a big ball of gum in my mouth or a big lollipop,” she said. “I started having pain, and the only thing that would come out was blood.”

Inna was diagnosed with Ewing’s sarcoma, a bone cancer. John Eaves Jr., who represents Coral, Inna and other islanders in the lawsuit against the federal government, told CNN, “There is suffering throughout this island.”

“You cannot walk down the street on this island without counting every house and knowing two or three people on the street that have cancer, or have had cancer, or have died from cancer,” Eaves said. “But for me, the most disturbing thing is the number of children on this island that have terminal cancer.”

Eaves, of Mississippi, has taken more than 1,300 hair samples from Vieques residents and had them tested for heavy metals. About 80 percent of the hair samples tested positive for heavy metals. Many of the results show levels of toxic elements in people that are literally off the charts — the lines representing substances like lead, mercury, arsenic, aluminum and cadmium extend beyond the “dangerous” area and out of the grid entirely.

“These hair samples, I believe, are the strongest proof that the contaminants — the things that were in the bombs, like the lead, mercury, cadmium, arsenic, aluminum — are now in the people,” Eaves said.

Behind one of those charts is 7-year-old Taishmalee Ramos-Cruz, whose hair was tested when she was 2. Taishmalee’s parents say she had been very sick, and they fear she may get sick again.”

There is suffering throughout this island.

–John Eaves Jr

“She looked like she had chemotherapy. She lost all her hair, and she had these spots on her legs,” her father told CNN. “She also had bad trouble using her fingers properly for a long time.”

Eaves said he was not surprised to learn of the problems Taishmalee has experienced.

“Unfortunately, we have seen many children on Vieques with similar problems,” he said. “And she may still get sick again. We don’t know if she will get cancer later.”

Dr. Carmen Ortiz Roque, a Harvard-trained epidemiologist, has studied the Vieques population for years. She and other scientists have been deposed in the lawsuit.

“The human population of Vieques is by far the sickest human population that I’ve ever worked with,” said Ortiz, who practices in San Juan. “These people are very sick very early, and dying earlier. So something is happening there.”

Ortiz has compiled statistics for the Vieques population that she and other scientists find alarming.

“It’s astonishing,” she said. “They die 30 percent higher of cancer, 45 percent higher of diabetes, 95 percent higher of liver disease, and 381 percent higher of hypertension than the rest of Puerto Ricans.”

Ortiz’ findings are supported by and are now used by the Puerto Rico Department of Health as an indicator of health problems for the people of Vieques. She also found disturbing statistics on mercury levels in the Vieques population — levels that are much higher than the rest of Puerto Rico.

“Twenty-seven percent of the women in Vieques have enough mercury to damage their baby’s brain. That is very significant.” she said. “This is very serious, given that mercury causes permanent damage and mental retardation in children and that the hair samples are a standard way of measuring this exposure in women in the reproductive age.”

She said her sampling of children 5 and under in Vieques had “at least six times higher levels of mercury exposure than children sampled in the United States.”

Dr. John Wargo, a Yale University expert on the effects of toxic exposure on human health, said he believes contamination from the bombing range has caused illnesses among Vieques residents.

“The chemicals released on the island have the capacity to induce cancer, to damage the nervous system, to cause reproductive damage, mutations, genetic damage, and also to harm the immune system,” said Wargo, who is slated to testify as an expert witness in the islanders’ lawsuit.

In 2003, scientists from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention concluded there was no link between the U.S. military activity on Vieques and the health problems suffered by the island’s population. The scientists were from the CDC’s Agency for Toxic Substances Disease Registry (ATSDR) division, which studies the nation’s toxic superfund sites.

Numerous scientists and federal lawmakers have since publicly criticized the 2003 report on Vieques.

Howard Frumkin, director of the ATSDR, was grilled at a House science and technology subcommittee hearing last year over the effectiveness of the agency and its handling of the Vieques and other questionable sites. In a report released just two days before the March 12 hearing, the subcommittee found that “time and time again ATSDR appears to avoid clearly and directly confronting the most obvious toxic culprits that harm the health of local communities throughout the nation.

“Instead, they deny, delay, minimize, trivialize or ignore legitimate concerns and health considerations of local communities and well-respected scientists and medical professionals.”

And in November, a group of at least seven scientists, including Ortiz and Wargo, called on ATSDR to conduct more research on the Vieques. ATSDR later that month announced it would take a “fresh look” at Vieques and conduct new studies to determine whether the Navy’s contamination at Vieques made people sick.

In January, ATSDR’s Frumkin was reassigned.

In response to the islander’s lawsuit, the U.S. government is invoking sovereign immunity, claiming the islanders do not have the right to sue the government and that there’s no proof that the Navy’s activities caused the widespread illnesses.

For the sick residents of Vieques there is no time to lose.

“What I want is people to get medicine and help here,” said Inna. “I know how people are suffering in this island. I see people in the streets and poor people living like wild things. And there’s kids dying on the street. It’s not good.”

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/US/02/01/vieques.illness/?hpt=C1&imw=Y

Island residents sue U.S., saying military made them sick

By Abbie Boudreau and Scott Bronstein,

CNN Special Investigations Unit

February 1, 2010 — Updated 2103 GMT (0503 HKT)

Vieques, Puerto Rico (CNN) — Nearly 40 years ago, Hermogenes Marrero was a teenage U.S. Marine, stationed as a security guard on the tiny American island of Vieques, off the coast of Puerto Rico.

Marrero says he’s been sick ever since. At age 57, the former Marine sergeant is nearly blind, needs an oxygen tank, has Lou Gehrig’s disease and crippling back problems, and sometimes needs a wheelchair.

“I’d go out to the firing range, and sometimes I’d start bleeding automatically from my nose,” he said in an interview to air on Monday night’s “Campbell Brown.”

“I said, ‘My God, why am I bleeding?’ So then I’d leave the range, and it stops. I come back, and maybe I’m vomiting now. I used to get diarrhea, pains in my stomach all the time. Headaches — I mean, tremendous headaches. My vision, I used to get blurry.”

The decorated former Marine is now the star witness in a multibillion-dollar lawsuit by more than 7,000 residents of this Caribbean island — about three-quarters of its population — who say that what the U.S. military did on Vieques has made them sick.

For nearly six decades, beginning right after World War II, Vieques was one of the Navy’s largest firing ranges and weapons testing sites.

“Inside the base, you could feel the ground — the ground moving,” Marrero said. “You can hear the concussions. You could feel it. If you’re on the range, you could feel it in your chest. That’s the concussion from the explosion. It would rain, actually rain, bombs. And this would go on seven days a week.”

After years of controversy and protest, the Navy left Vieques in 2003. Today, much of the base is demolished, and what’s left is largely overgrown. But the lawsuit remains, and island residents want help and compensation for numerous illnesses they say they suffer.

“The people need the truth to understand what is happening to their bodies,” said John Eaves Jr., the Mississippi attorney who represents the islanders in the lawsuit.

Because he no longer lives on Vieques, Marrero is not one of the plaintiffs but has given sworn testimony in the case. He said the weapons used on the island included napalm; depleted uranium, a heavy metal used in armor-piercing ammunition; and Agent Orange, the defoliant used on the Vietnamese jungles that was later linked to cancer and other illnesses in veterans.

“We used to store it in the hazardous material area,” Marrero said. It was used in Vieques as a defoliant for the fence line.

The military has never acknowledged a link between Marrero’s ailments and his time at Vieques, so he receives few disability or medical benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Neither the Navy nor the Justice Department, which is handling the government’s defense, would discuss the islanders’ lawsuit with CNN.

But Eaves said his clients don’t believe that the military has fully disclosed the extent of the contamination on Vieques: “Like uranium was denied, then they admitted it.”

Dr. John Wargo, a Yale professor who studies the effects of toxic exposures on human health, says he believes that people on the island are sick because of the Navy’s bombing range.

Vieques … is probably one of the most highly contaminated sites in the world.

–Dr. John Wargo

“Vieques, in my experience of studying toxic substances, is probably one of the most highly contaminated sites in the world,” he said. “This results from the longevity of the chemical release, the bombs, the artillery shells, chemical weapons, biological weapons, fuels, diesel fuels, jet fuels, flame retardants. These have all been released on the island, some at great intensity.”

Wargo is the author of a new book, “Green Intelligence,” on how environments and toxic exposure affect human health. He is also expected to testify as an expert witness in the islanders’ lawsuit.

He said the chemicals released by the munitions dropped on Vieques can be dangerous to human health and may well have sickened residents or veterans who served on the island.

“In my own mind, I think the islanders experienced higher levels of exposure to these substances than would be experienced in any other environment,” Wargo said. “In my own belief, I think the illnesses are related to these exposures.”

The effects of those chemicals could include cancer, damage to the nervous, immune and reproductive systems or birth defects, he said.

“This doesn’t prove that the exposures caused those specific illnesses,” Wargo added. “But it’s a pretty convincing story from my perspective.”

Since the Navy left the island, munitions it left behind “continue to leak, particularly from the east end of the island,” Wargo said.

“My concerns are now predominantly what’s happening in the coastal waters, which provide habitat for an array of fish, many species of which are often consumed by the population on the island,” he said.

Scientists from the University of Georgia have documented the extent of the numerous unexploded ordinance and bombs that continue to litter the former bomb site and the surrounding waters. The leftover bombs continue to corrode, leaching dangerously high levels of carcinogens, according to researcher James Porter, associate dean of the university’s Odum School of Ecology.

The Environmental Protection Agency designated parts of Vieques a Superfund toxic site in 2005, requiring the Navy to begin cleaning up its former bombing range. The service identified many thousands of unexploded munitions and set about blowing them up. But the cleanup effort has further outraged some islanders, who fear that more toxic chemicals will be released.

The U.S. government’s response to their lawsuit is to invoke sovereign immunity, arguing that residents have no right to sue it. The government also disputes that the Navy’s activities on Vieques made islanders ill, citing a 2003 study by scientists from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that found no link.

That study, however, has been harshly criticized by numerous scientists, and the CDC is embarking on a new effort to determine whether residents may have been sickened by the contamination from the Navy range.

Asked whether his duty on the island made him sick, Marrero responds, “Of course it did.”

“This is American territory. The people that live here are American,” he said. “You hurt someone, you have to take care of that person. And the government’s just not doing anything about it.”