[CPEO-MEF] HEALTH: Agent Orange veterans, Andersen Air Force Base (GU)

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Agent Orange's Toxic Legacy Hits Home

Jan Barry
EarthAirWater
January 12, 2011


Retired Master Sergeant LeRoy Foster is haunted by the job that launched 
his 20-year career in the US Air Force - spraying herbicides along 
perimeter fences and fuel pipelines at Andersen Air Force Base in Guam. 
This duty seemed inconsequential, field maintenance work done amid B-52 
bombers thundering in and out to refuel for bombing raids over Vietnam 
and a beehive of other military operations buzzing at Navy bases on the 
small island in the mid-Pacific Ocean. Despite nasty outbreaks of acne 
that a military doctor recorded in a 1968 medical report, he couldn't 
imagine that the government-issued weed-killers might be planting tiny 
time bombs powerful enough to destroy his health and the lives of many 
other people.

Forty-some years later, MSgt. Foster spends much of his time in a 
wheelchair, anxiously rocking his infant grand daughter, who was born 
last year with extra toes and fingers and a heart abnormality. At 62, 
living on VA disability and military retirement checks, he also spends 
hours on his computer in Westfield, NY, a small town near Buffalo, 
emailing to wider and wider circles of other veterans and public 
officials. High on his to-do list are pleas for a federal investigation 
and public health warnings of the potential effects of the toxic legacy 
of extensively contaminated land and water in Guam - as well as at many 
other active and former US military bases around the world.

...

For the entire article, see
http://earthairwater.blogspot.com/2011/01/agent-oranges-toxic-legacy-hits-home.html
--


Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org



_______________________________________________
Military mailing list
Military@lists.cpeo.org
http://lists.cpeo.org/listinfo.cgi/military-cpeo.org