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Topic: Agent Orange Gagetown (Read 7775 times)
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Young Ken
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Fri 24 Aug 2007 Nanaimo Daily News Effects of Agent Orange exposure continue to plague B.C. man by Walter Cordery NANAIMO, B.C. - Kelly Franklin's parents could not understand what was wrong with their baby, who became sick when the family moved to a new home at Canadian Forces Base Gagetown in New Brunswick in 1958, right around the boy's first birthday. "Right after we moved there, I developed asthma and severe allergies and nobody in New Brunswick could tell my parents why," said Franklin, now 49. His parents finally took him to a doctor in Maine who determined that environmental factors were the probable cause of his allergies and asthma. "He thought it was insecticides I might be breathing, but we didn't know about the Agent Orange or other herbicides because the Canadian government wanted to keep that a secret," said Franklin. Like many others, Franklin believes Ottawa is trying to cover up the extent of its involvement in the spraying of Agent Orange and other herbicides on the base. A study released Tuesday that found only those individuals who had direct contact with herbicides at the base were at risk of contracting a number of chemically related diseases is just one more in a string of denials Franklin says he has been hearing from Ottawa and the Department of National Defence for years. The study, conducted for Ottawa by Intrinsik Environmental Sciences Inc., did not have enough of a mandate to really examine the health ramifications of the spraying that took place at Gagetown from the 1950s to 2000, said Nanaimo's Kenneth Young, who was at the base in the early 1970s. "Ottawa gave them too wide a parameter, including the whole city of Fredericton that is miles away," said Young. "If adding 40,000 more people into the mix doesn't water down the study, I don't know what will." A host of studies examining the health of people living near or on the base have found no direct connections between the health problems those living in Gagetown have experienced and the spraying of Agent Orange and other defoliants. The Department of National Defence has said Canada allowed the United States to test Agent Orange for a short period in 1966 and 1967. "I've got hundreds of documents through access to information of both the Canadian and U.S. governments and even the Pentagon which shows the Americans were spraying Agent Orange and other chemicals at Gagetown as far back as 1950s," said Franklin who, like Young and others, has spent years researching chemical use on the base. Franklin says neither he, his father or his mother handled chemicals but all three have suffered a number of different health problems that studies have linked to chemical exposure. As a child, Franklin spent as much time in hospital because of his allergies as he did at home. "I had a horrible childhood really. I was in every hospital in every town we ever lived in," Franklin said. Young, who left the military in 1977, said he has heard too many stories to believe it is just coincidence many people who lived on or around the base suffered from multiple similar ailments. Wayne Dwernychuk, an environmental scientist, said Agent Orange and some of the other chemicals used at Gagetown have very high levels of dioxins that can damage an individual's immune system. "And that means you never know what it is going to affect because different peoples' exposures may compromise their immune systems in differing ways," he said. "The amount of risk a person faces is going to depend on how much exposure a person has to the chemical." He also said he is unimpressed with the results of the federal government-sponsored study. The report released Tuesday did conclude that there are "positive associations" between exposure to the herbicides and the development of soft tissue sarcoma and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, as well as laryngeal cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer, Hodgkin's disease, multiple myeloma, chronic lymphocytic leukemia, spina bifida, spontaneous abortions, Parkinson's disease and Type 2 diabetes. wcordery@nanaimodailynews.com |
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Young Ken
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Something wrong with the date on this one but that is how we found it.
***********************************
Mon 03 Sep 2007
Maclean's
'We were told it wouldn't hurt us': Those who were poisoned by Agent Orange at CFB Gagetown may finally get paid
by KATE LUNAU
John Chisholm remembers when Agent Orange came to Gagetown in New Brunswick in 1966. Stationed on the military base as a member of the artillery unit, the young soldier was assigned with a handful of others to help spray the chemical defoliant. Some days Chisholm would mix it; others he'd stand out in the field, hoisting a giant flag to mark where helicopters should drop their load. "It would sting to the high heavens," recalls Chisholm, now 69, who was repeatedly doused in the herbicide. "But I'll tell you one thing we did notice right off the bat: there were no more mosquitoes out there. It'd kill them in no time."
Agent Orange -- famously used by the U.S. military to clear swaths of the Vietnamese jungle from 1962 to 1971 -- was sprayed over a small area of CFB Gagetown for three days in 1966 and four days in 1967 as part of a U.S. military test project. Agent Purple, its lesser-known cousin, was also sprayed, as was Agent White -- together, the so-called "rainbow drugs," as Chisholm knows them. "We were told it wouldn't hurt us," he says, recalling one fellow soldier eating a boxed lunch off a barrel of Agent Orange, and others even spraying one another with it to cool off.
Agent Orange exposure has since been associated with an array of medical conditions, from leukemia to diabetes to prostate cancer, according to the U.S. Institute of Medicine (the IOM is recognized by the Canadian government as the leading scientific authority on the herbicide). Chisholm now has prostate cancer. He hasn't received a cent in compensation from the Canadian government, money he feels he deserves. Now, after years of delay, a compensation package could be on the horizon. Veterans Affairs Minister Greg Thompson recently told Maclean's to expect an announcement "before summer passes." Veterans, civilians and communities around the base are all being looked at, Thompson said. "We've tried to come up with a package that is fair to all those considerations," he explained.
While it's not yet clear who would be eligible for compensation, thousands of Canadians who have worked or lived on or near CFB Gagetown feel they're owed it -- and say the problem extends well past the test use of Agent Orange. Many claim they've been harmed by other herbicides sprayed on areas of the base almost annually since 1956 to remove cover and reduce the risk of forest fires during soldiers' exercises. "In our community, anecdotally, there seems to be an awful lot of cancer," says Jody Carr, MLA for Oromocto-Gagetown.
In the early years of the spray program, "the contaminants of the annual spray were one and the same as the contaminants of Agents Orange, White and Purple," says former New Brunswick health minister Dennis Furlong, who's led an inquiry into the use of herbicides on the base, adding that the contaminants were spread unknowingly at the time, according to his research. While Ottawa insists herbicide spraying on the base has been tightly controlled, defoliants did drift on the wind to nearby Upper Gagetown and Sheffield in 1964, wiping out some farmers' crops. "Tomatoes just crack," farmer's daughter Gwen Harvey, 15, told the Aug. 8, 1964, edition of the local Daily Gleaner newspaper. The government paid out about $250,000 in reparations and modified its spray program to reduce drift as a result.
Ottawa's sluggish response to calls for Agent Orange compensation stands in stark contrast to the U.S. and New Zealand. In the U.S., Vietnam veterans are paid automatically if they develop a medical condition associated with Agent Orange exposure. New Zealand last year announced a $22-million compensation package that includes ex gratia payments of $30,000 to its Vietnam vets suffering from certain conditions. The package also included a formal apology. Britain has even compensated a British soldier exposed to Agent Orange at Gagetown: Keith Pilmoor, who was stationed at the base in 1966 and said he was sick for decades after, was awarded a special pension earlier this year.
Ottawa, meanwhile, didn't publicly acknowledge that veterans had been harmed by the use of Agent Orange at Gagetown until 2005. That was the year Gloria Sellar broke the news that her husband had received a medical disability pension for exposure, widely believed to be the first pension of its kind. Retired Brig.-Gen. Gordon Sellar, who commanded the Black Watch regiment at Gagetown and was later diagnosed with leukemia, died on Oct. 1, 2004, only months after the pension was awarded. "We all knew something terrible was happening, but no one was talking about it," Sellar says. She's been a strong advocate for victims ever since.
When Chisholm learned that Sellar had received a pension, he was angry. "I said, 'What the hell's going on?' They may have slept in it; they may have been sprayed. But they were never in it like I was." Chisholm has applied for a disability pension from Veterans Affairs four times, and four times he's been turned down for lack of documentation. "You can't get [documentation]. There is none," he says.
While DVA says it can't discuss specific cases, disability pension applications must be "evidence-based," says spokesperson Janice Summerby. Applicants must prove they were exposed to the herbicides, and have a medical condition the IOM associates with exposure. Eight pensions have been awarded so far to veterans exposed to Agent Orange and other herbicides at Gagetown (and 32 to peacekeepers for exposure in Vietnam after the January 1973 peace accords), while 1,652 applications have been filed, the vast majority of them related to Gagetown.
For civilians who worked on the base during the Agent Orange spraying, the fight for compensation has been even more difficult. A teenager in the summer of 1966, Ken Dobbie worked at CFB Gagetown cutting and burning defoliated brush. Dobbie, who now heads the Agent Orange Association of Canada, has suffered a rash of health problems -- from diabetes to brain atrophy -- ever since. But civilians aren't eligible for DVA pensions, so those who claim to have been affected must apply for worker's compensation. "They wanted my supervisor's signature," says Dobbie. "Who at CFB Gagetown or at DND am I going to get to sign my form, 40 years later?"
A total of 22 injury compensation claims related to Agent Orange exposure have been filed to the Workplace Health, Safety and Compensation Commission in New Brunswick. Of those, 15 have been rejected. The rest are still under review. But Dobbie's not waiting anymore: in 2005 he launched a class-action lawsuit in the Federal Court against the Department of National Defence. After the government sued Agent Orange manufacturers Dow Chemical Company and Monsanto Company as third parties, the action moved into the provincial courts. Class action lawsuits are now being pursued in eight provinces, and about 2,500 people, represented by lawyer Tony Merchant, have signed on. The suit in Newfoundland recently became the first to get the go-ahead when it was certified in the Newfoundland Supreme Court. DND, Dow and Pharmacia (formerly Monsanto) intend to appeal.
In 2005, shortly after Sellar broke the news about her husband's pension, Ottawa initiated a fact-finding mission to examine the herbicide spraying at Gagetown from 1952 to now. Furlong is at its head, and Chisholm and Sellar both sit on an advisory panel. While Carr notes that the project (which is to wrap up imminently) has been generally well-received, it's attracted some controversy. An environmental consulting company tied to the mission recently threatened to sue Green party leader Elizabeth May after she publicly criticized it. "[Cantox Environmental Ltd.] does have a reputation for having done health risk assessments and generally concluding there isn't a problem," May said in June, after the company (recently renamed Intrinsik) concluded in most of its studies that herbicides used at Gagetown posed no health risks. May did not retract her statement.
Retired Brig.-Gen. Ed Ring spent 34 years in the military, including several posted at Gagetown in the 1970s and '80s. He now suffers from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (a condition the IOM associates with Agent Orange exposure). His take on the fact-finding mission is subdued; Ring hasn't been contacted by them, nor has he sought them out. "I'm sure they're reputable people," he says. "But it's irrelevant as far as I'm concerned for the soil to be tested at Gagetown [today]. For me, the damage was done then, when the stuff was on the ground." Ring is the lead plaintiff of the class-action suit in Newfoundland.
The most recent fact-finding mission report, released on Tuesday, also elicited some criticism. The first-ever epidemiological study of the Gagetown-area population, it concluded that people living there are no more prone to cancer than those living elsewhere in the province. Furlong admits the report isn't flawless. It only dates back to 1980, when medical records were digitized. With a project mandate of 18 months (that's already been exceeded by half a year), going back any further just wasn't possible, Furlong says. He stands by the work, noting that every study put out by the fact-finding project was twice peer-reviewed. "We can't make assumptions or work on emotion," Furlong says. "We have to use the best science we have, and that's what we've done."
As of yet, it's unclear what impact these findings will have on the long-awaited compensation package. Reports issued by the fact-finding mission are "all being reviewed by the people who are preparing a package," says the DVA's Summerby, adding that the information is also drawn upon when rendering decisions on disability pensions. But for those still awaiting compensation, is it only about the money? "I suspect it may be to a point," says Ring. "But a lot of people are looking for some kind of closure. I would like to see this through, and close the book on it."
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Young Ken
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DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS
Determinations Concerning Illnesses
Discussed in National Academy of
Sciences Report on Gulf War and Health
AGENCY: Department of Veterans Affairs.
ACTION: Notice.
SUMMARY: As required by law, the
Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)
hereby gives notice that the Secretary of
Veterans Affairs, under the authority
granted by the Persian Gulf War
Veterans Act of 1998, Public Law 105–
277, title XVI, 112 Stat. 2681–742
through 2681–749 (codified at 38 U.S.C.
1118), has determined not to establish a
presumption of service connection at
this time, based on exposure to
insecticides or solvents during service
in the Persian Gulf during the Persian
Gulf War, for any of the diseases,
illnesses, or health effects discussed in
the February 18, 2003, report of the
National Academy of Sciences, titled
``Gulf War and Health, Volume 2.
Insecticides and Solvents.'' This
determination does not in any way
preclude VA from granting service
connection for any disease, including
those specifically discussed in this
notice, nor does it change any existing
rights or procedures.
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Young Ken
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Tue 21 Aug 2007
Global
Agent Orange
CanWest Global Transcripts
TARA NELSON: During the height of the Vietnam War, the U.S. and
Canadian armies tested military grade herbicide like Agent Orange
extensively around CFB Gagetown in New Brunswick. Years later,
locals and veterans began blaming it for high cancer rates and other
diseases. The dramatic findings of a final report from Ottawa
however appeared to have largely turned those arguments upside down.
But as Ross Lord tells us, some say the study is flawed.
ROSS LORD (Reporter): There's no question exposure to Agent Orange,
best known for its use by the American military in Vietnam causes
cancer. The mystery is whether decades of chemical spraying
including Agent Orange damaged the health of soldiers at Canadian
Forces Base Gagetown, New Brunswick and people who live nearby.
GLORIA PAUL (Gagetown Area Resident): I've lived in many parts of
the world and never seen the amount of illness that I've witnessed
in Hoyt, Geary, Tracy, Fredericton Junction, all of these
surrounding areas from the base.
JOHN CHISHOLM (Military Veteran): The people who have asthma, the
people who have high blood pressure, the people that have skin
disease on the tops of their heads, on their arms, on their legs,
people that are bleeding every year day in and day out.
LORD: But a fact-finding team appointed by the federal government
has concluded nearby communities do not have higher rates of cancer.
DENNIS FURLONG (Fact Finding Mission Chair): There were a few
differences observed between the study area population around base
Gagetown and the province of New Brunswick as a whole.
LORD: And it says only those in direct contact with the spraying
were at greater risk, a group that excludes most soldiers, a setback
for veterans pushing the government for compensation. They say the
study is weak because it doesn't include data from the thousands of
soldiers who trained at Gagetown and have either moved away or died.
GRANT PAYNE (Military Vietnam): The population that's here now is
not reflective of those that were there in the 60's and the 70's and
it's, it's as simple as that.
LORD: The federal government has suggested compensation is on the
way following a series of public meetings that concluded last year.
But the Department of Veterans Affairs wasn't commenting on that
issue today. And veterans fear by narrowing the list of people at
risk from spraying today's findings could lead to smaller
compensation if and when the payments arrive.
CHISHOLM: And I'm 70 years old. How much time have I got?
LORD: Ross Lord, Global News, Halifax.
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Young Ken
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By Walter Cordery
Daily News
Kelly Franklin’s parents could not understand what was wrong with their baby.
The year was 1958 and the family had moved to a new home on a military base in New Brunswick, right around Kelly’s first birthday.
Almost immediately, the now-49-year-old Nanaimo man started suffering from asthma and experiencing terrible allergic reactions.
Franklin’s father Joseph was a military police officer and his family had been stationed at CFB Gagetown.
“Right after we moved there, I developed asthma and severe allergies and nobody in New Brunswick could tell my parents why,” Franklin said. “Finally my parents had to take me to a doctor in Bangor, Maine.”
Eventually the American doctor determined environmental factors were the probable cause of his allergies and asthma.
He prescribed medication and told Franklin’s parents to ensure he wore a surgical mask whenever he went outside.
“He thought it was insecticides I might be breathing but we didn’t know about the Agent Orange or other herbicides because the Canadian government wanted to keep that a secret.”
Like many members of the military who served at CFB Gagetown, Franklin believes the federal government continues to try to cover up the extent of its involvement in the spraying of Agent Orange and other herbicides that occurred at the base.
In his opinion, Tuesday’s federally-initiated study, which found only those individuals who had direct contact with herbicides at the base are at risk of contracting a number of chemically-related diseases, is a continuation of the denials he has been receiving from Ottawa and the Department of National Defence for years.
The study, conducted for Ottawa by Intrinsik Environmental Sciences Inc., did not have enough of a mandate to really examine the health ramifications of the spraying that took place at Gagetown from the 1950s to the year 2000, said Nanaimo’s Kenneth Young, who was a young military man at the base in the early 1970s.
“You have to look at what those conducting the study were asked to look at,” said Young. “Ottawa gave them too wide a parameter, including the whole city of Fredericton that is miles away.
“If adding 40,000 more people into the mix doesn’t water down the study, I don’t know what will,” he said Young.
The study is among a host of others which examined the health of people living near, or on, the base to determine if the annual chemical spraying programs have harmed area residents.
The studies have found no direct connections between the health problems those living in Gagetown have experienced and the spraying of Agent Orange and other defoliants.
Young said he is convinced that’s because the Canadian government doesn’t want to admit culpability for the health impacts due to the spraying. Like Franklin, and other members of the Agent Orange Association of Canada, Young has spent years researching the spraying.
The Department of National Defence has said Canada allowed the United States to test Agent Orange for a short period in 1966 and 1967. Both Nanaimo men dispute this.
“I’ve got hundreds of documents through access to information of both the Canadian and U.S. governments and even the Pentagon which shows the Americans were spraying Agent Orange and other chemicals at Gagetown as far back as 1950s,” said Franklin.
Most of the previous studies had similar findings as the Intrinsik report, that the only people who faced potential health risks from the chemical spraying were those directly involved in mixing, applying and clearing brush during the spray procedures.
Neither Franklin, his mother Margaret, or his father Joseph handled the chemicals in any way, he said. However, he believes the toxins from the chemicals were in the air they breathed and that preceded the litany of health problems they have experienced.
Many people in and around CFB Gagetown and those who served at the base have experienced cancers but Franklin’s father wasn’t one of them.
“The one thing he didn’t get was cancer,” said Franklin.
His father, who died in 1996, started suffering health problems shortly after the family left the base in 1964, he said.
Joseph Franklin’s health issues included: growths on his neck and shoulder that had to be surgically removed, Type 2 diabetes, boils, renal failure, an aneurysm, digestive disorders and numerous cardiac problems. His official cause of death, said Franklin, was congestive heart failure due to diabetes.
His 74-year-old mother Margaret has also had to deal with numerous health problems since leaving Gagetown. Most of them showed up in the 1970s, Franklin said. Margaret’s health issues include: lupus, ovarian cysts, arthritis, Raynaud’s syndrome, muscle spasms and thyroid problems.
As a child, Franklin spent as much time in hospital because of his allergies as he did at home.
“I had a horrible childhood really. I was in every hospital in every town we ever lived in,” Franklin said.
Young, who left the military in 1977, said he has heard too many stories like the Franklin family’s, to believe it is just coincidence many people who lived on, or around, the base suffered from multiple similar ailments.
He is another who has had no end of health problems since he was crawling around in the bush at Gagetown in 1972.
He’s not the only Canadian veteran to reject the government’s study.
“I think they’re full of crap,” said Jim Burke, a former Gagetown base soldier told CanWest News.
“It’s a whitewash,” echoed Art Connolly of the Agent Orange Associaton of Canada.
Gloria Sellar, who sparked the Agent Orange controversy said she found the final community health report to be “shallow.”
Gen. Gordon Sellar, Gloria Sellar’s late husband, is one of the few Gagetown herbicide victim to have receive a disability pension from Veterans Affairs.
To help the Americans with the Vietnam War effort, the Canadian government allowed the U.S. military to spray Agent Orange and other chemical defoliants on the forests at Gagetown. Canada also sprayed herbicides over the base grounds.
“Don’t blame the Americans for this,” Young said. “The Americans didn’t spray near as much as Canada.”
In the early ’70s, after being spraying and losing their leaves, trees were chopped down and left to rot.
“Everything was dead,” Young said. “There was no life there at all, not even a mosquito.”
Young said he was on a night manoeuvre during a military exercise in 1972 and his platoon had to crawl in the dark over the trunks of the fallen trees and the leaves that had come off after the defoliant spraying.
“By the time we got to our destination, we were covered in dust, breathing it in and bits of rotting leaves and covered in sweat that dripped down our faces and into our mouths.”
Two weeks after the night manoeuvre, Young started to experience what he believed were flu-like symptoms: Nausea and diarrhea. They persisted.
“I didn’t realize what was happening until one day I buckled over because it became so acute and I was put in hospital for eight months. I lost about 65 pounds while in hospital.”
Fearing Hodgkins lymphoma, doctors removed his spleen and told his wife he would be dead in a few months.
Since then, Young has battled colon cancer, has lived with damaged nerves that cause a constant tingling in his hands, suffers muscle spasms “that can knock you out of bed” and been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes.”
He also has a digestive disorder that causes constant bowel movements and keeps him close to a washroom at all times.
Young said he’s convinced many of his health problems stem from crawling through the bush at Gagetown that night in 1972.
Wayne Dwernychuk, an environmental scientist with Hatfield Consultants, said Agent Orange and some of the other chemicals used at Gagetown have very high levels of dioxins that can damage an individual’s immune system.
“And that means you never know what it is going to affect because different peoples’ exposures may compromise their immune systems in differing ways.
“The amount of risk a person faces is going to depend on how much exposure a person has to the chemical,” Dwernychuk said. He also said he is unimpressed with the results of the federal government-sponsored study.
The report, released on Tuesday, did find there is sufficient evidence to conclude there are “positive associations” between exposure to the herbicides and the development of soft tissue sarcoma and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
“There was also preliminary evidence of positive associations between exposure to chorophenoxy herbicides and laryngeal cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer, Hodgkin’s disease, multiple myeloma, chronic lymphocytic leukemia, spina bifida, spontaneous abortions, Parkinson’s disease and Type 2 diabetes,” the report states.
“All they did was study who were still living in the area of New Brunswick,” said Dwernychuk. “What about the people who were on the base and moved elsewhere. Why weren’t they examined?”
Even study author Intrinsik Environmental Sciences, noted a number of shortcomings in its methodology. They echoed Dwernychuk’s concern that many people have long since moved away from Gagetown.
Intrinsik suggests another study to examine the health histories of people who were involved in the spraying of herbicides from the early 1960s to 2000.
Another study won’t fill Franklin with confidence.
He’s disgusted with Ottawa’s reluctance to admit culpability to the health issues his family and others have faced because of the chemical spraying.
“I don’t trust the powers that be in Ottawa — Liberal or Conservative,” he said.
“One person told me, ‘you wait for the official line from a government official and then you can see the lie.’”
WCordery@nanaimodailynews.com
729-4229
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Young Ken
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To the Editor,
I am responding to Some fears better left alone; Sometimes the most-
publicized dangers are the ones that threaten you the least,
apparently an editorial published in the Victoria Times-Colonist on
26 August 2007.
A retired intelligence analyst, I am Canadian honorary observer of
the Pesticide Working Group in Washington.
I strongly disagree that our exposure to lax environmental controls
abroad is something we shouldn't worry about. Eating excessively
contaminated fruit and vegetables adds to the chemical soup children
are now exposed to even before they are born.
As well, people are wise to be worried by the effect of herbicides.
It would be simplistic to expect instant deaths from herbicides on a
large scale, since the effect of all the toxins contaminating our
bodies is slow, resulting as it does from cumulative exposures.
And now let us take a good look at the shameful and misleading
report on the impact of spraying Agent Orange at Gagetown in New
Brunswick. First of all, a hasty study on a complicated subject as
this is bound to be worthless. The Ontario College of Family
Physicians took twelve years to produce their famous report
published in 2004.
To my knowledge, the defoliant was used at Gagetown in huge
quantities, for at least 26 years. But this was then and has nothing
to do with rate of cancer in the area experienced now. The affected
people have moved away and those living now at the Base are subject
to average Canadian exposures. The false comparison made in the
report is invalid and illogical.
K. Jean Cottam, PhD
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Mon 27 Aug 2007 The Ottawa Citizen Compensation at any cost Veterans and civilians who've lived on and near the Canadian Forces Base at Gagetown, N. B., have waited a long time to be compensated for illnesses they link to herbicide exposure there. A fact-finder named by the federal government has been investigating the magnitude of the problem. Dr. Dennis Furlong, a physician and former New Brunswick health minister, is finding facts that suggest they'll be disappointed. The federal Conservatives have painted themselves into an unfortunate corner on this file. Veterans Affairs Minister Greg Thompson, a New Brunswicker whose riding includes the Gagetown base, has already pledged a compensation program for veterans who served there. That decision, at least partly meant to differentiate the Tories from the Liberals, who wouldn't make any such promise, has seemed less and less prudent as more and more information has emerged about the dangers at the base. Despite conspiracists convinced that the military used Agent Orange to clear plants off the Gagetown firing range during the period between the 1950s and the 1980s, the Department of National Defence insists it was tested there briefly in two periods in 1966 and 1967. Agent Orange was bad stuff, laden with dioxin and responsible for birth defects where the U.S. military used it as a defoliant in the Vietnam War. It may indeed have hurt people, and so might have direct exposure to other herbicides the military used at the base. But the studies commissioned by Dr. Furlong have found that group after group -- people involved in the testing, people who served at Gagetown in the years after the herbicide was used, and so on -- have exhibited no significant elevated risk of disease. The latest findings seem to narrow the group that deserves compensation to those who were personally coated in the stuff: According to Dr. Furlong and the experts he hired to examine the numbers as far back as 1980, no more people connected to the base died or contracted cancer than you'd expect, in comparison to the broader New Brunswick population. One-third of Canadian men die of heart disease or strokes. One out of four Canadians dies of cancer, according to the Canadian Cancer Society, and 44 per cent of men get the disease at some point. Thousands of troops and civilians have rotated through CFB Gagetown over the decades. Any population that large will have health problems, including its share of freakishly rare ones. Perhaps Mr. Thompson's compensation will end up going only to the handful of veterans already receiving disability pensions for illnesses strongly linked to direct Agent Orange exposure. That might be difficult to accept for those who've spent years fighting to be paid for the connections they see between the spraying at CFB Gagetown and ailments they and their family members have suffered. They certainly won't take it easily from a government they expected to champion their cause. The easy thing for Mr. Thompson to do will likely be to pay them off anyway. He mustn't. There can be valid arguments for compensating people based on a strong possibility they've suffered harm from government actions, where proving a definitive link would be impossible. But the evidence is mounting toward the opposite conclusion for most of the people who've spent time at Gagetown. http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/editorials/story.html?id=e613ab2d-dbde-4c95-bcd3-e01c26c2fe25 |
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Tuesday, September 4, 2007
Far From The Mekong
Far From the Mekong: Seeking Agent Orange Compensation in Canada.
By Nick Logan
Canadian Forces Base (CFB) Gagetown, in my home province of New Brunswick, may be on the opposite side of the world from Viet Nam yet these two places have a dreadful connection. No Canadian soldiers set foot on Vietnamese soil during the American-led war, but the government was active “diplomatically,” providing aid and arms to the South. Canada, itself, became famous for being a safe-haven for “draft dodgers” fleeing the United States from military conscription. Today Gagetown and Vietnam are linked by the legacy of the devastating herbicides that were sprayed over their land.
During 1966 and 1967, the U.S. government was invited to test the dioxin-containing defoliant Agent Orange, at CFB Gagetown, for a combined period of 7 days. The more lethal Agent Purple and Agent White, which does not contain dioxin, but the hazardous compound hexachlorobenzene, were also released over the densely forested base. The Canadian Department of National Defense (DND) has acknowledged this testing, but did not make it publicly known that the base conducted routine clearing with these chemicals over a period of 28 years. Originally, it was claimed that only 589 litres of the herbicides were sprayed during that 7 day period, but the shocking truth became known, through declassified documents, that over 1.3 million litres of the three agents – and compounds of similar makeup -- were sprayed over this expanse of time, not to mention a further one million kilograms of dry Agent White.
As with the victims of the Viet Nam war, there is a battle for compensation being fought here, in Eastern Canada. Military personnel were not placed in the direct lines of the spraying, but many were posted on the periphery: more were involved with the preparation, transport, and application of the agents. Numerous people have come forward with diseases and conditions that have been attributed to Agent Orange exposure, such as: diabetes, chloracne, Hodgkin’s disease, and various cancers. The government has recognized these findings and agreed to a paltry settlement to a small number of claimants. This deal has yet to be finalized and will prevent further prosecution should more evidence be accepted. The admission of accountability stops there.
Local teenagers were hired, part-time, to remove the waste left behind, yet they are ineligible for benefits as they were not present during the actual operations. It has been said that the debris posed no threat.
Equally troubling, is that the Gagetown and Area Fact Finding Project – which is not independent of the government -- alleges that there was no possibility of neighbouring communities being affected as a result of: the poisons drifting in the air, seeping into the soil or running off into the waterways. This is an effort to hinder compensation claims for secondary exposure. Those findings are questionable, though. Their investigation only considered the land sprayed during the seven days of American testing, not the total 181,000 acres used over 3 decades and the bordering residential areas.
We may not have seen the devastating effects to the same extent that Viet Nam has, but that is no excuse for the Canadian government to attempt to minimize the severity of the issue and to avoid paying reparations. Approximately $1.7 million (CAD) has been spent trying to debunk the claims, but public outcry is growing. Two thousand people are involved in the class-action lawsuit, seeking at least $50,000 each. The government’s complacency is not averting a payout, simply delaying it.
Posted by nickontherun at 12:36 PM
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ranrad
Ron [Andy] Andrews
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Well, great report there Ken. I think it shows without any doubt , a deliberate attempt ,by the Fed.Gov to coverup, sweep aside the honest and real result of this contamination... and what it has done and is doing to human beings.. to me a TRUE CANADIAN TRAGEDY PERPETRATED BY OUR OWN FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.....shame , shame on them... maiming and killing your own people, and then failing to own up to your responsibilities...ranrad
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RCAF,CAF, converted RCR?,1RCR 74-77 CD: SSM (Nato);CPSM,;UN-Cyp.; UN- Golan
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