UK Veterans Battle Gulf War Syndrome

Charity Urges Action Over Gulf War Syndrome 
SKY News UK
January 17, 2016

Suggested causes have included depleted uranium used in weapons, sarin gas, smoke from burning oil wells, vaccinations and combat stress.

Little is known about the causes of the syndrome but Gulf veterans report symptoms up to three times the rate of other veterans.

The Royal British Legion is calling for more help for veterans suffering from Gulf War Syndrome amid concerns that up to 33,000 could be affected.

The charity wants the Government to carry out more research into illnesses linked the 1991 Gulf War, in which 53,462 Britons served.

"We still do not know how to effectively treat Gulf War Illnesses," said the charity, which was speaking as the 25th anniversary of the start of the war is marked this weekend.

Acute and chronic fatigue, muscle pain, cognitive problems, rashes and diarrhoea are some of the symptoms of the syndrome.

The charity points to research that shows Gulf War veterans report such symptoms at two to three times the rate of other veterans, particularly post-traumatic stress disorder.
read more here

Fort Carson On Roster of Contaminated Army Bases

Hundreds of pounds of depleted uranium likely buried at Fort Carson, Army says
The Gazette
By: Tom Roeder
Published: October 18, 2015

The Army says 12,405 acres may have been contaminated during the Davy Crockett days. Fort Carson is joined on the roster by installations in Hawaii, Washington state, Georgia, Kentucky, Kansas, Louisiana, North Carolina, Texas, Oklahoma, South Carolina and California.

The Davy Crockett weapon in this undated Army photo featured a 51-pound warhead that packed a nuclear punch. To train with the weapon and aim it in combat, troops used a 1-pound spotting round made from depleted uranium. An estimated 1,400 depleted uranium rounds were fired at Fort Carson.

The Cold War legacy of nuclear waste at Fort Carson was quietly exposed in a routine application by the Army for a Nuclear Regulatory Commission permit to leave uranium buried on the post.

Depleted uranium, as much as 600 pounds, is thought to be in the ground at several sites from training shells fired in a 1960s classified program to give soldiers a nuclear- tipped bazooka called the Davy Crockett, according to Army documents. The training rounds were smaller spotting shells to train crews on the use of the atomic weapon without the big boom and a mushroom cloud. The Davy Crockett was never fired in combat.

Since discovering the uranium munitions in Hawaii in 2005, the service has done 10 years of detective work to figure out which bases participated in the testing program.
read more here

Iraq veteran dying after exposure to uranium has to pay for treatment

This is from the UK. It is important for 2 reasons. One is that the UK won't pay to treat her, which is disgraceful but the other reason is, our troops were there too.

Soldier dying after being exposed to uranium in Iraq must raise £110,000 for treatment because the NHS can't help her
Katrina Brown, 30, was exposed to radioactive material in Basra
Diagnosed with rare systemic sclerosis which is slowly attacking her organs
She believes the illness is linked to exposure to depleted uranium
Says her only hope is having stem-cell transplant to regenerate her organs
By ANNA HODGEKISS
PUBLISHED: 07:47 EST, 3 April 2013

A soldier who developed a deadly illness after being exposed to uranium in Iraq is facing a race against time to raise the money she needs for potentially life-saving treatment.

Katrina Brown, 30, was exposed to radioactive material while serving as a medic at a 600-bed military clinic in Basra in 2003.

She was diagnosed with rare systemic sclerosis in 2008 which is slowly attacking her major organs - and will eventually lead to her death if left untreated.

Mrs Brown, who joined the Army at the age of 17, believes the illness is linked to exposure to depleted uranium.
read more here

KCTV5 NEWS INVESTIGATION: Weapon Of Choice Depleted Uranium

KCTV5 NEWS INVESTIGATION: Weapon Of Choice
PRAIRIE VILLAGE, Kan. -- Since 1991 the U.S. military has admitted to using depleted uranium in armor and ammunition on a large scale. But since then, a debate has raged about its long-term health effects on soldiers and their families.

Could one of the most effective military tools in their arsenal actually be harming soldiers?

Jerry Wheat is one of the hundreds of thousands of American men and women who have enlisted in the U.S. Armed Forces.

"I was in the army for 4 years and 10 months. I joined in 1989 as a 19 Delta, which is a cavalry scout," said Wheat. "My job was to go out and look for the enemy."


Wheat was awarded the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star after his 1991 deployment in Gulf War I.

Wheat said his unit was in Iraq, heading toward Basra, when it got caught up in a firefight.

"My Bradley was hit again with another tank round, and that tank round knocked me unconscious," said Wheat.

In an instant flash of fire, smoke and shrapnel, Wheat became a casualty of war. But without knowing it, his battle was just beginning.

"I took shrapnel in the back of my head. I had some second- and third-degree burns, and there was about 25 pieces of shrapnel from my head all the way down my back," said Wheat.

The military initially denied it, but Wheat ultimately learned that the pieces of shrapnel embedded in his head and back were shards from "friendly fire" and some of the fragments contained depleted uranium.

"As a soldier, you know, most of us didn't know what DU was or made aware of to stay away from it," said Wheat.

go here for more and video

http://www.kctv5.com/investigations/19372087/detail.html

Vet's family still seeks compensation for illness that killed him

Vet's family still seeks compensation for illness that killed him
By Sam Stanton - sstanton@sacbee.com
Published 12:00 am PDT Saturday, September 6, 2008
Story appeared in MAIN NEWS section, Page A1


They'll hold a fundraiser in Auburn next Friday to help pay Matt Bumpus' medical bills.

The Roseville man and his family worked on the event for months in hopes of raising money to treat his leukemia.

But Bumpus won't be there. The 31-year-old father of two died a month ago after a series of battles with his disease.

He believed – and his family still does – that he became ill because he was exposed to depleted uranium at a chemical weapons site while serving with the Army in Iraq.

"All of them were very concerned about what they were exposed to, very concerned," said his stepmother, Laura Bumpus.

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs rejected one claim Bumpus filed seeking compensation for his illness. But on Friday, a VA official told The Bee the agency will revisit the case and see whether Bumpus' widow, Lisa, and their two sons are eligible for assistance.

"Lisa and Matt's parents all have the right to come in and file a claim, and I would really welcome that," said Lynn Flint, the VA's regional director in Oakland.

The family plans to file another claim but has seen firsthand the difficulty of proving that an illness diagnosed post-service may have stemmed from wartime conditions.

Veterans from the 1990-91 Gulf War worked years to convince officials that Gulf War syndrome illnesses were real.

And just last month, researchers at UC Davis Cancer Center said veterans exposed to Agent Orange are twice as likely to get prostate cancer as are other veterans – a finding that comes decades after the herbicide was used in Vietnam.

Bumpus, a staff sergeant in the Army's 3rd Infantry Division, was sent Dec. 23, 2003, to guard the Al Muthanna Chemical Weapons complex in Iraq and spent two nights there, his family said.
go here for more
http://www.sacbee.com/749/story/1215038.html

Widow's VA claim of depleted uranium gaining steam

Widow's VA claim gaining steam
Press-Register - al.com - Mobile, AL,USA
Monday, July 28, 2008
By GEORGE WERNETH
Staff Reporter
A Mobile woman says she was encouraged recently when a Department of Veterans Affairs appeals judge agreed to review a claim involving her late husband, who believed that his Army exposure to radiation triggered his deadly cancer.

Theresa Orrell said she has been struggling with the VA over her husband's case for nine years, seeking acknowledgement of the dangers that he faced, as well as compensation for her family.


About six weeks before dying in 1999, Lt. Col. William A. Orrell III, an Army Reserve officer, filed a claim with the VA, certain that his pancreatic cancer was connected with his encounter with depleted uranium in Kuwait. He was 56 when he died.

Last month, an appeals judge, Lisa Barnard, took Orrell's depleted uranium death claim under advisement after a hearing in Montgomery. A ruling is expected in six to nine months.

"I was encouraged because this judge was more down-to-earth than the previous judge and she wanted all the facts," Theresa Orrell said.

There had been a huge explosion and fire involving U.S. military vehicles containing depleted uranium on July 11, 1991, in Doha, Kuwait, and he was sent two days later to inspect them, she said. That's when he believed he was exposed to high levels of radiation, Theresa Orrell said. She said the vehicles were still smoldering while he inspected them.
click above for more

General physical health of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan

The General Physical Health of Iraq and Afghanistan War Veterans
Wednesday July 2, 2008
Soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan are showing high rates of PTSD, alcohol use, depression and difficulties with anger. Returning soldiers may also be at a heightened risk for physical health problems.
The experience of a traumatic event has been linked to a number of physical health problems as well as unhealthy behaviors, such as smoking and alcohol use. Obviously, being deployed in a war zone, such as Iraq or Afghanistan, increases the likelihood that a person will experience a traumatic event and thus be at a greater risk for developing PTSD and potential physical health problems. Soldiers deployed to a war zone, however, also face additional risk factors for physical health problems, including sustaining a physical injury and being exposed to environmental contaminants (dangerous chemicals).
Therefore, a study by researchers at the Seattle VA Hospital examined what factors (the experience of PTSD symptoms, physical injury, exposure to environmental contaminants) may be connected to physical health problems among Iraq and Afghanistan War veterans. You can read about their interesting findings here.

War Illnesses Fester

War Illnesses Fester

By Thomas D. Williams
The Public Record
May 29, 2008

Favoured : 2

Published in : Nation/World


"The most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its instruments are individual human beings, and that these individual beings are condemned by the monstrous conventions of politics to murder or be murdered in quarrels not their own." - Aldous Huxley, English Writer

Ever since the Persian Gulf War 15 years ago, countless spokespersons for the US Department of Defense and the US Department of Veterans Affairs have insisted they are intent upon giving hundreds of thousands of soldiers, veterans and war veterans the best medical care available.

Meanwhile, scores of US, United Nations and foreign politicians and military officials have constantly expressed immense concern for potentially millions of innocent civilian victims of the wars in Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet, relatively little has been done worldwide to track their deaths, console family survivors or obtain health care for the wounded, maimed and sick. The combined ill and the dead from those four wars are estimated in the millions with no exacting figures available. Knowledge about sicknesses caused by the war in Bosnia-Serbia is scarce.

And, what makes US and allied officials far more culpable is this. The environmental hazards foreign civilians and US and allied service members have been exposed to and sickened by are largely generated by US and allied bombings, munitions and even medicines aimed at protecting service members. They include: radioactive dust from depleted uranium munitions, deadly chemical warfare gases released by US bombings of Iraqi bunkers, oil well fires during the first Gulf War, pollution of European and Middle Eastern foreign air and water supplies from wartime explosions and fires, pesticides, fumes from specialized military vehicle paint, and disease carrying insects.

The Pentagon's and the British military's mandatory use of the controversial anthrax vaccine and other experimental drugs, including US use of pyridostigmine bromide pills to protect against gas attacks, on troops have resulted in thousands of adverse reactions, many serious ones, some even listed on drug labels as possible but not provable fatal reactions.

The air and water hazards have had untold deadly impacts on innocent civilians in both Europe and the Middle East for more than the past decade.

Here is but one lone example of the lack of emphasis on care for wounded or sick wartime civilians: "A survey of Medline (a database of medical and health-related research articles) for articles on the Gulf War revealed 368 articles that covered the health-related issues. Only 4 out of these 368 articles were on how the 1991 Gulf War affected the health of Iraqi people."

Yet, the International Red Cross reports these realities: "[Iraqi] Medical-legal facilities are struggling to cope with the rising influx of bodies, contending with insufficient capacity to store them properly or to systematically gather data on unidentified bodies in order to allow families to be informed of a relative's death. In 2006, an estimated 100 civilians were killed every day. Half of them remained unclaimed or unidentified. Thousands of unidentified bodies have thus been buried in designated cemeteries in Iraq. Meanwhile tens of thousands are being held in the custody of the Iraqi authorities and the multinational forces in Iraq. At the same time, tens of thousands of families remain without news of relatives who went missing during past and recent conflicts."

Today, after two wars in Iraq, one in Bosnia and another in Afghanistan, involving hundreds of thousands of US troops, neither the Pentagon nor the VA, by their own admissions, are close to giving thousands of soldiers and veterans even adequate health care for potentially deadly illnesses.
click post title for more

Depleted uranium to be monitored at Schofield

Depleted uranium to be monitored at Schofield

The Associated Press
Posted : Wednesday Apr 23, 2008 16:51:30 EDT

HONOLULU — The Army says depleted uranium at Schofield Barracks poses no health risk.

It’s decided it won’t try to remove Cold War munitions discovered in 2005.

But the Pentagon is going to spend $2.5 million to monitor the training range at Schofield for any danger from the weaponry, as well as ranges at Makua Military Reservation and Pohakuloa on the Big Island.

Army radiation safety officer Greg Komp says federal and state radiation experts have determined the Schofield area is safe for soldiers who live near the site and for workers.

Depleted uranium is twice as dense as lead and has been used as part of the armor to protect tanks. It’s also been used in projectiles designed to penetrate enemy armored vehicles.

The uranium was found on a 400-acre impact area of the Schofield training range.
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/04/ap_depleted_uranium_042308/

War:When the enemy is the military

By revealing the truth about how and why American soldiers became ill while fighting overseas, this film sets the record straight and holds the government accountable for trivializing and covering up some of the major causes and consequences of Gulf War Syndrome.

Gulf War Syndrome-Killing Our Own (Trailer)
published by qruel 10 hours 33 minutes 58 seconds ago • 136 views

After the Vietnam War, hundreds of thousands of U.S. veterans suffered toxic reactions, neurological damage, and rare cancers due to exposure to 2,4,5,-D and 2,4,5-T dioxin that was used in the form of the defoliant Agent Orange. Unfortunately, the U.S. military denied the problem and failed to heed any of the lessons of this chemical butchery. Instead, it expanded its harmful legacy to the current generation of soldiers and civilians exposed to new, more deadly chemical toxins in the Persian Gulf.

Join accomplished filmmaker Gary Null, PhD, as he explores the real truth about Gulf War Syndrome and the secrets about chemical and germ warfare that the U.S. government is hiding from its veterans and the public. Dr. Null uncovers the hidden truths about Gulf War Syndrome, including the deadly and toxic effects of armor-piercing radioactive depleted uranium, the use of experimental and risky vaccines on over 100,000 U.S. troops, and the indescribable chemical contamination and environmental devastation that the military caused during the Persian Gulf Wars.

In this film, Dr. Null relies on compelling testimony from eyewitnesses who served in the military, leading doctors and scientists who specialize in chemical exposure, and those veterans still suffering from the effects of their tours of duty. Dr. Null goes further than ever before to explain the illnesses of Gulf veterans, including their rare cancers, neurological diseases, cardiac ailments, genetic mutations, and autoimmune conditions, ranging from chronic fatigue syndrome to lupus and scleroderma. "Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome" is the glib and demeaning explanation that the U.S. Government likes to give to injured veterans and their families.......

Click post title for the rest

Agent Orange. Depleted Uranium. Hepatitis C. Lariam. What goes into waging war is part of the deal. It's not just the men and women sent, but the chemicals they are sent in with. Some they are given and others they are exposed to. The military brass pass most of it off as "collateral damage" when these chemicals kill off civilians. What do they call it when it kills off our own people? What do they call it when it comes home with them, killing them slowly and then attacks their children? What do they call it when the ravages of war attach to minds and then slowly attack the families of the wounded? What do they call it when the same government fails those who ended up wounded? Most of these things should be called criminal but they get away with it when the government announces it was "all necessary" to complete the mission,but the mission never ends for far too many exposed to their expedience. It is not the quickest solution for them but the beginning of a very slow end.