Warning to Indiana National Guard about toxic deployment

Guard still seeks soldiers with toxic risk

The Associated Press
Posted : Saturday Sep 13, 2008 17:40:24 EDT

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.
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http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/09/ap_toxicrisk_091308/